Oxygen as a Heteroatom in Propargylic Alcohols: Reactivity, Selectivity, and Applications

Abstract

Propargylic alcohols serve as versatile building blocks in synthetic organic chemistry and utilized as starting materials in many useful transformations. These transformations include the synthesis of conjugated‐aldehydes, ketones, esters, amides, silylketones, enynes, and enynones. A large number of metal complexes, based on Ti, V, Mo, W, Re, Ru, Ni, Pd, Cu, Ag, and Au have been identified to functionalize the propargylic alcohols. Until recently, however the potential of activated propargylic alcohols remained underexploited due to difficulties in preparation and isolation. Despite, the highly nucleophilic alkyne functional moiety along with oxygen atom at 3‐position, drew the attention of researchers to develop the versatile synthetic transformations. Based on literature reports, this review summarizes the recent advancement and potential applications of activated propargylic alcohols.

Recent Developments in the Meyer‐Schuster Rearrangement

“…Further, a review on cascade reactions includes also a few examples with MSR, [7a] and a very recent review on propargylic alcohols chemistry reports also a number of MSRs [7b] …”

Synthesis of α-sulfenylated carbonyl compounds under metal-free conditions

“…Many organic molecules can be efficiently constructed from propargyl alcohols, such as conjugated-aldehydes, ketones, enynes and enynones. 1 On the other hand, sulfur is one of the important elements in living systems. It is often present in the form of proteins and amino acids.…”