Final Analysis: Is Gold a Catalyst in Cross-Coupling Reactions in the Absence of Palladium?

摘要

In the last decade gold has emerged as a kind of “philosopher's stone” in catalysis, being able to promote a bewildering variety of transformations, including cross-coupling reactions for the formation of carbon–carbon bonds. These highly useful transformations were developed in part by the 2010 Nobel Prize awardees Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki (1) and with contributions from many other research groups. Recently, there has been some question over whether gold can catalyse these reactions which have been traditionally catalysed by palladium complexes.