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Williamson ether synthesis article revision.

Conditions
Since alkoxide ions are highly reactive, they are usually prepared immediately prior to the reaction, or are generated in situ. In laboratory chemistry, in situ generation is most often accomplished by the use of a carbonate base or potassium hydroxide, while in industrial syntheses phase transfer catalysis is very common. A wide range of solvents can be used, but protic solvents and apolar solvents tend to slow the reaction rate strongly, as a result of lowering the availability of the free nucleophile. For this reason, acetonitrile and N,N-dimethylformamide are particularly commonly used.

A typical Williamson reaction is conducted at 50 to 100 °C and is complete in 1 to 8 h. Often the complete disappearance of the starting material is difficult to achieve, and side reactions are common. Yields of 50–95% are generally achieved in laboratory syntheses, while near-quantitative conversion can be achieved in industrial procedures.

Catalysis is not usually necessary in laboratory syntheses. However, if an unreactive alkylating agent is used (e.g. an alkyl chloride) then the rate of reaction can be greatly improved by the addition of a catalytic quantity of a soluble iodide salt (which undergoes halide exchange with the chloride to yield a much more reactive iodide, a variant of the Finkelstein reaction). In extreme cases, silver compounds such as silver oxide may be added:

Innovations
In undergraduate laboratories, the Williamson ether synthesis is a common reaction, particularly in the Organic Chemistry field. Yields for these ether syntheses are traditionally low because of insufficient time in the class period which often leads to shortened reaction times. Without allowing the reactions to reflux for the correct amount of time the reaction may not proceed to completion generating a poor overall product yield. To help mitigate this issue microwave-enhanced technology is now being utilized to speed up the reaction times for reactions such as the Williamson ether synthesis. This technology has transformed reaction times that required reflux of 1.5 hours to a quick 10-minute microwave run and this has increased the yield of ether synthesized from a range of 6-29% to 20-55% (data was compiled from several different lab sections incorporating the technology in their syntheses).