Iron Catalysis: Historic Overview and Current Trends

Abstract

Iron catalysis is a growing area of research, as seen by an exponential increase in the publication activities on the topic. This introductory chapter provides a historic overview of the development of iron catalysis including some notable milestones. The advantages of iron, i.e., its abundance, low price, and relative nontoxicity, are discussed, and an overview of the main type of reactions catalyzed by iron is outlined. The advances of heterogeneous iron catalysis (which is not covered in this volume) are exemplified with a few notable cases. Finally, the potential impact of metal impurities in iron sources on the catalytic activity is discussed.

New Trends in Oxidative Functionalization of Carbon–Hydrogen Bonds: A Review

“…During the past several decades, many metals have been studied in catalytic activation and functionalization of carbon-hydrogen bonds. The reader is directed to selected recent examples with gold [123], cobalt [124][125][126] chromium [127], copper [128][129][130][131] iron [132][133][134][135], iridium [136], manganese [137][138][139], molybdenum [140], nickel [141], osmium [142][143][144][145][146][147][148], palladium [149][150][151], rhenium [152], rhodium [153,154], ruthenium [155,156], and vanadium [157,158].…”

Conversion of Olefins into Ketones by an Iron‐Catalyzed Wacker‐type Oxidation Using Oxygen as the Sole Oxidant

“…[1] For economic and ecological reasons,iron-based catalysis appears most attractive and has been developed into ap owerful tool in synthetic organic chemistry. [2] Many of the iron-catalyzed oxidations in biological systems benefit from activation of the substrate by as ingle electron transfer (SET) process (hemecontaining oxygenases,e .g.,c ytochrome P450 enzymes). [3] Thus specific oxidations of hydrocarbons at virtually unactivated positions are feasible.W er ecently embarked on aproject using iron-phthalocyanines as catalysts for selective oxidations via aSET mechanism under mild conditions.…”

Piano-stool N-heterocyclic carbene iron complexes: Synthesis, reactivity and catalytic applications

“…In recent years, developing catalysts based on cheap, Earth-abundant and environmentally benign transition metals has become an area of intense research. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] While historically disregarded in favour of rare and precious metals, iron fulfils all these requirements and furthermore supports a plethora of catalytic transformations including substitution and addition reactions, isomerisations and rearrangements, and oxidation and reduction reactions. [10,12] This broad scope is in part attributed to the extensive range of oxidation states available to iron, from −2 to +6.…”