Microwave-assisted Homogeneous Gold Catalyzed Organic Transformations

What is it about?

Golden Friendship: Microwave chemistry is an emerging area of science mainly focusing on various applications of microwave energy into chemical processes. Microwave irradiation has enormous potential to provide controlled energy directly to the molecules of interest. On the other hand, homogeneous gold catalysis has emerged in the last two decades or so as one of the most promising fields in organic and organometallic chemistry. Its efficacy has been established many times for the construction of new C – X (X = O, N, S, etc.) and C – C bonds under mild reaction conditions. The combined perspective of microwave heating and homogeneous gold catalysis can be an almost synergistic approach, in the sense that the combination as such has more potential than its two separate sections alone. This mini-review is designed to give an interesting insight into various homogeneous gold catalyzed organic reactions under microwave irradiation for the synthesis of library of electronically and structurally diverse and biologically important organic molecules.

Featured Image

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The combination of homogeneous catalysis and microwave heating is not only a hot topic but also a research domain expected to influence many modern fields of chemistry. This review article has covers thoroughly the substrate scope, yield and selectivity in various synthetic methods to get a clear overview in this emerging field. Although a significant number of reports have appeared in the literature regarding the homogeneous gold-catalyzed organic transformations under microwave conditions, this is the first review article in the literature.

Perspectives