Adduct purification is a technique for preparing extremely pure simple organometallic compounds, which are generally unstable and hard to handle, by purifying a stable

adduct An adduct (from the Latin ''adductus'', "drawn toward" alternatively, a contraction of "addition product") is a product of a direct addition of two or more distinct molecules, resulting in a single reaction product containing all atoms of all co ...

with a Lewis acid and then obtaining the desired product from the pure adduct by

thermal decomposition Thermal decomposition, or thermolysis, is a chemical decomposition caused by heat. The decomposition temperature of a substance is the temperature at which the substance chemically decomposes. The reaction is usually endothermic as heat is re ...

. Epichem Limited is the licensee of the major patents in this field, and uses the trademark EpiPure to refer to adduct-purified materials; Professor Anthony Jones at

Liverpool University , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

is the initiator of the field and author of many of the important papers. The choice of Lewis acid and of reaction medium is important; the desired organometallics are almost always air- and water-sensitive. Initial work was done in

ether In organic chemistry, ethers are a class of compounds that contain an ether group—an oxygen atom connected to two alkyl or aryl groups. They have the general formula , where R and R′ represent the alkyl or aryl groups. Ethers can again be ...

, but this led to

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as ...

impurities, and so more recent work involves tertiary

amine In chemistry, amines (, ) are compounds and functional groups that contain a basic nitrogen atom with a lone pair. Amines are formally derivatives of ammonia (), wherein one or more hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element wi ...

s or

nitrogen Nitrogen is the chemical element with the symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at se ...

-substituted

crown ethers In organic chemistry, crown ethers are cyclic chemical compounds that consist of a ring containing several ether groups (). The most common crown ethers are cyclic oligomers of ethylene oxide, the repeating unit being ethyleneoxy, i.e., . Impo ...

References

Professor Anthony C. Jones

Purification of dialkylzinc precursors using tertiary amine ligands
Chemical reactions Separation processes {{reaction-stub