Recent advances in iridium-catalyzed organic synthesis

Abstract

Transition metal complexes play an important role in modern organic synthesis, because they can realize useful transformations that would be either difficult or impossible by conventional organic chemistry. Organic synthesis with iridium was far behind that with rhodium, ruthenium and palladium in the early 1990 s. However, many useful reactions catalyzed by iridium have been reported today. This review focuses on enantioselective hydrogenation of unfunctionalized alkenes, allylic substitution, cycloaddition, cycloisomerization, carbonylation and aldol reaction.