One-Pot Synthesis: On the Order of Introducing Reagents.

The effect of altering the order of introduction of reactants into the reaction vessel in organic synthetic reactions is discussed. A method is presented by which it is possible to select a small subset of introduction orders to determine whether or not the order of mixing plays any role in the course of the reaction. The possibility of detecting important interactions between reaction constituents is discussed. The proposed strategy is examplified with a study of titanium tetrachloride/triethylamine induced self-condensation of 3,3-dimethyl-2-butanone (pinacolone).