Metal Free Phosphorus Butterfly Compounds

Abstract

Metal-free organophosphorus are demanded compounds due to their interesting properties in a variety of applications, spanning from fine to material chemistry. Unfortunately, their synthesis is very challenging, requiring a precise design of the reaction conditions to avoid the conspicuous formation of undesired products. The P-butterfly scaffold is considered the very first opening step of the white phosphorus tetrahedron upon selective cleavage of just one PÀ P bond. While the synthesis of metal-containing P-butterflies is nowadays reproducible with a variety of transition metal complexes, the metalfree analogues are still elusive and just a limited number of examples is described in the literature. The state of art on known metal-free phosphorus butterfly compounds is described herein.