N-Heterocyclic Carbene Mediated Organocatalysis Reactions

Arduengo et al., isolated the first ‘bottleable’ carbene, the first N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) 1,3-di(adamantyl)imidazol-2-ylidene resulted to an explosion of experimental and theoretical studies of novel NHCs being synthesized and analyzed have huge practical significance. These compounds emerged as successful ligands for coordinating transition metals, the complexes with NHC show diverse applications in the field of catalysis and organic transformation, NHC as ligand to main group elements and their properties and applications. Here this chapter provides the concise overview of N-heterocycle carbene as an organocatalyst that provides different organic transformation on to a carbonyl group. The majority of the NHC catalyzed reactions are employed in the phenomenon of reversing the electrophilic character of carbonyl carbon to nucleophilic carbon (umpolung activity) on coordination suggests benzoin, Stetter and hydroacylation reactions. Also, non-umpolung activity of bis-electrophile α,β-unsaturated acylazoliums reaction with suitable bis-nucleophiles in the organic synthesis have been studied.