COMMENTARY
DOI: 10.1002/adsc.201600381
Gold Catalysis – Steadily Increasing in Importance
Antonio M. Echavarren,a,* A. Stephen K. Hashmi,b,* and F. Dean Tostec,*
a
b
c
Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), Av. Paisos Catalans 16, 43007 Tarragona, Spain
E-mail: [email protected]
Organisch-Chemisches Institut, Universit•t Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 270, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
E-mail: [email protected]
Department of Chemistry, MC 1460, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
E-mail: [email protected]
Since the beginning of the millennium the field of
gold catalysis has emerged as one of the top subjects
in organic chemistry. Analysis of the chemical databases clearly documents this evolution and the subject
is listed among the “Hot Topics” in major journals. If
the activity in gold catalysis would have followed
a normal “life cycle”, one could have expected a slow
decay in the numbers of publications after about
a decade. The opposite is the case; the interest is not
decreasing but rather continues to grow. One can observe that the success in catalysis research has provided important impulses for other sectors of gold
chemistry, too. Many of the new complexes of gold
developed for catalysis find interesting new applications in other fields. Many of the mechanisms initially
proposed for gold-catalyzed reactions have provided
new impulses for the stoichiometric organometallic
chemistry of gold; the recent efforts in the field of oxidative addition to gold(I) and reductive elimination
at gold(III) are good examples. Overall, gold catalysis
triggered a revival of all aspects of gold chemistry,
ranging from gold nanoparticles to applications of
gold-catalyzed reactions in the total synthesis of complex natural targets.
In this special issue “Gold Catalysis: Quo Vadis”
a series of publications on subjects with high potential
for the future of gold catalysis have been collected.
Adv. Synth. Catal. 2016, 358, 1347
The issue contains two timely reviews: one on goldcatalyzed reactions of diyne substrates, with a focus
on the use of carbonates and esters, the other covering N- and O-functionalizations of alkynes with
a focus on reagents with N¢O bonds. A series of communications cover diverse subjects ranging from the
preparation of gold-nanocrystals as catalysts, heterogeneous gold-catalyzed reactions to a diverse family
of cycloadditions providing pharmaceutically interesting heterocycles, a borrowing hydrogen strategy and
a total synthesis. Full papers on solvent-free gold-catalyzed conversions, micellar gold catalysts, access to
heterobimetallic species, gold-functionalized platinum
nanospheres as well as heterogeneous catalysts for
the selective oxidation of amines are included in the
issue, too. Furthermore, four updates round out the
picture; examples here describe access to strained bicyclic compounds, visible light photoredox catalysis
and powerful gold-catalyzed cascade reactions.
Overall, “Gold Catalysis: Quo Vadis” demonstrates
how the field now is quickly moving beyond classic
topics of early gold catalysis, like nucleophilic addition reactions or reactions of carbene intermediates.
The new topics show how gold catalysis will continue
to play an important role in organic synthesis and organometallic chemistry.
Õ 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
1347