Synthesis Explorer

About Synthesis Explorer

SE is designed to help student chemists plan synthetic routes and study key organic chemistry reactions. It can be used by teachers and students to introduce, explore and revise organic chemistry. Features include:

• hundreds of compounds, reactions and synthetic pathways
• a wide range of reactants, products and details of reaction conditions and reagents
• physical data, structures and (where available), ¹H and ¹³C NMR, IR and MS spectra for each compound

The spectral data is especially useful when illustrating reaction schemes which involve a change in functional group and reflects the increasing requirements for understanding spectroscopic data in the current post-16 specifications.

Your specifications

For more information about specifications, visit the appropriate awarding body website and download the latest version:

AQA CCEA Edexcel

OCR Salters

SQA WJEC

Support

Synthesis Explorer is provided as a free resource. However, it is the result of significant investments of time and effort. If you found this resource useful and would like to help to keep it up-to-date (and hopefully, advert free), please consider a donation. Since you can't buy us a cup of coffee, simply click the Paypal button below:

Thanks to...

We'd like to thank the following for their support. Would you like to join the wall of fame?

The information published on this site could include inaccuracies or typographical errors. Please contact us (twitter: @SynthExplorer) if you find any!

We can and will make improvements to this site and the information published herein at any time!

Features / to do / done

Done list (changelog)

• 2021 Nov Edexcel added.
• Some minor cosmetic changes to this page (e.g. Header is no longer fixed).
• 2018 SQA H/AH routes added.
• Trends plotting bug fixed.
• Exam questions now sortable.
• 2018 Edexcel routes and lots more spectra files added.
• Spectra plotting bug fixed.
• 2017 synthetic routes, compounds and (over 200) data files added.
• External Plugins (JQuery, JQuery-Ui and jsPlumb) updated. Some minor modifications made as a result...
• Lots of new data files added and old ones checked and updated
• Whole load of new compounds and reactions added, including some that appear to be made up!
• BUGFIX - trends (hopefully) now plot properly in IE
• More CCEA questions/compounds added
• BUGFIX - error when no spectra available now resolved
• CCEA questions (and new compounds/data files) starting to be added
• "Share This" textbox added
• API now fully accessible from main screen
• Compound trends added - showing [ T_m | T_b | Density ] vs M_r for all current compounds.
• Modification to twitter card images
• BUGFIX - error when accessing API now resolved
• This page is now an ASP page rather than a simple HTML page
• 'Multimedia' links added to compound 'Links' section (only sparsely populated at the moment though)
• Initial compounds are now more spread out on the planner
• Newly added compounds (products) are now positioned relative to the reactant compound
• API added - you can now embed Synthesis Explorer directly into your own web pages
• Compounds added for Sample Assessment Materials in 2016 Specifications
• exam questions referenced for ease of use
• new data fields (e.g. ChemSpider IDs) added for cross-site linking purposes
• new compounds, data files and spectra added for exam Qs published since 2011
• data access now faster
• unused compounds and duplicated reactions removed
• compound database redesigned - now better structured
• User interface totally rewritten
• all functionality now written in Javascript/HTML/CSS for true cross-platform interoperability

• An earlier version of Synthesis Explorer was hosted on the RSC Learn Chemistry platform.

To do list

• Overlay spectra - allow (up to 3 or 4?) spectra of currently displayed compounds to be overlayed and compared.
• Orientation changes - resolve issues when changing orientation on some tablets.

Application Programmers Interface

Embedding SE into an external website

You can embed SE with synthetic routes pre-loaded into your lesson plans, by simply adding one line of HTML code to your web page:

<iframe src="http://www.synthesisexplorer.co.uk/planner.asp"></iframe>

Adding compounds to the URL

Up to six compounds may be added in the form of a valid systematic name, CAS identifier or ChemSpider ID. So long as these compounds are in the SE database, they will load and any synthetic pathways that exist between the compounds will be displayed.

planner.asp?compound=[name|CAS|ChemSpiderID]

For example, adding:

planner.asp?compound=butanone
loads butanone;

planner.asp?compound=butanone&compound=78-92-2
loads butanone and butan-2-ol; and

planner.asp?compound=butanone&compound=78-92-2&compound=6315
loads butanone, butan-2-ol and 2-chlorobutane.

Displaying compound data

You can also choose what, if anything, to display in the right-hand data panel:

planner.asp?display=[data|spectra|none]

Here:

planner.asp?display=spectra&compound=butanone
loads butanone with its spectra displayed.