Abstraction of chloride anion from Au(I) complexes such as JohnPhosAuCl in noncoordinating solvents with 1 equiv of a silver salt, or even larger amounts, leads to the formation of chloride-bridged dinuclear gold(I) complexes, irrespective of the counteranion, which are substantially less reactive as catalysts. This incomplete removal of chloride ligand could lead to false negative results when using the in situ generation of the gold(I) active species by silver-promoted chloride abstraction.

This review article covers the main types of gold(i) complexes used as precatalysts under homogeneous conditions in organic synthesis and discusses the different ways of catalyst activation as well as ligand, silver, and anion effects.

The enantioselective intermolecular gold(I)-catalyzed [2+2] cycloaddition of terminal alkynes and alkenes has been achieved using non-C2-chiral Josiphos digold(I) complexes as catalysts, by the formation of the monocationic complex. This new approach has been applied to the enantioselective total synthesis of rumphellaone A.

Chiral gold­(I) catalysts have been designed based on a modified JohnPhos ligand with a distal C 2-2,5-diarylpyrrolidine that creates a tight binding cavity. The C 2-chiral element is close to where the C–C bond formation takes place in cyclizations of 1,6-enynes. These chiral mononuclear catalysts have been applied for the enantioselective 5-exo-dig and 6-endo-dig cyclization of different 1,6-enynes as well as in the first enantioselective total synthesis of three members of the carexane family of natural products. Opposite enantioselectivities have been achieved in seemingly analogous reactions of 1,6-enynes, which result from different chiral folding of the substrates based on attractive aryl–aryl interactions.

Silver(I) promotes the highly chemoselective N-amidation of tertiary amines under catalytic conditions to form aminimides by nitrene transfer from PhI═NTs. Remarkably, this transformation proceeds in a selective manner in the presence of olefins and other functional groups without formation of the commonly observed aziridines or C-H insertion products. The methodology can be applied not only to rather simple tertiary amines but also to complex natural molecules such as brucine or quinine, where the products derived from N-N bond formation were exclusively formed. Theoretical mechanistic studies have shown that this selective N-amidation reaction proceeds through triplet silver nitrenes.