By
U.H. Brinker, Institut für Organische Chemie, Universität Wien, Wien, Austria
Description
Beginning as chemical curiosities, carbenes are now solidly established as reactive intermediates with fascinating and productive research
areas of their own. Five decades of divalent carbon chemistry have provided us with a vast repertoire of new, unusual and surprising
reactions. Some of those reactions, once classified as exotic, have become standard methods in organic synthesis. These highly reactive
carbene species have been harnessed and put to work to achieve difficult synthetic tasks that other reactive intermediates cannot easily
perform.
The fruitful relationship between experiment and theory has pushed carbene chemistry further toward the direction of reaction
control; that is, regio- and stereoselectivity in intra- and intermolecular addition and insertion reactions. The interplay between experiment
and modern spectroscopy has led to the characterisation of many carbenes that are crucial to both an understanding and a further development
of this field.
Understanding of carbene chemistry has advanced dramatically, especially in the last decade, and new developments continue
to emerge. Some of the recent exciting findings have been collected in the first volume of
Advances in Carbene Chemistry. With
this second volume, the series will continue to provide a periodic coverage of carbene chemistry in its broadest sense - leading into
the next century.
Audience:
For organic chemists with an interest in Carbene chemistry.
