Nature Chemistry. doi:10.1038/nchem.2798
Authors: Xianjie Fang, Bastien Cacherat & Bill Morandi
Previous methods to transform unsaturated substrates into carbonyl-containing products have generally relied on the use of hazardous carbon monoxide and tailor-made catalysts for each nucleophile employed. Now, shuttle catalysis can be used to perform a CO- and HCl-free transfer hydrochlorocarbonylation to access acid chlorides that can be transformed in situ into virtually any carbonyl-containing product.