Recent Advances in Nitrene Chemistry with Emerging Precursors

Nitrene-transfer reaction is one of the powerful synthetic tools in organic chemistry, facilitating a vast array of otherwise unattainable chemical transformations. Different types of nitrene precursors have been exploited and successfully applied in a variety of nitrene-based transformations for the direct construction of nitrogen-containing compounds with structural complexity. Although a few of review articles that focus on the specific nitrene precursors or different type of nitrene reactions have been reported, significant advancements have emerged over the past two decades driven by the introduction and application of novel nitrene precursors, enabling a variety of catalytic transformations for the synthesis of N-heterocyclic frameworks with structural diversity. Thus, a review paper that underscores the progress in nitrene chemistry by focusing on the advancements in nitrene precursors would be timely and highly desirable. In this review article, the advancements in nitrene chemistry, particularly those achieved with newly developed nitrene precursors over the past two decades, have been summarized. The presentation is organized by the type of precursor and further subdivided based on different nitrene reactions by focusing on the key mechanistic aspects, limitation, and synthetic capacity.