Author Description

During the last two decades, chemists have witnessed the explosive growth of organocatalysis, which provides a robust methodology for the preparation of numerous valuable compounds. The importance of organocatalysis in organic chemistry had been highlighted through the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 was given to Prof. David W.C. MacMillan and Prof. Benjamin List for outstanding contributions to “the development of asymmetric organocatal-ysis”. Compared to the classical transition-metal catalysis and biocatalysis, organocatalysis has a number of unique properties, such as transi-tion-metal-free, very good structural amenability, novel modes of activations, easy availability of a broad variety of naturally occurring small organic catalysts, including natural sources of chiral amino acids, Cinchona alkaloids, carbenes and others. Today, organocatalysis has been a powerful technology for organic synthesis. In addition to the applications in organic synthesis and catalysis, organocatalysis has also been used in the production of enantio-mers, in fine chemistry, pharma, crop-protection, and fragrance chemistry. As one important type of organic catalyst, N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) have broad applications in organic synthesis. Inspired by the natural coen-zyme thiamine (vitamin B1) catalysis, chemists developed various NHCs and used them to catalyze a broad variety of transformations, including benzoin reaction, Stetter reaction, homoenolate transformations, redox reactions, cycloadditions, photo-reactions and other reactions. On the other hand, aldol condensation reaction is one of the most important reactions for the con-struction of carbon-carbon bonds. Based on the unique Lewis basicity of NHCs, we and other groups realized efficient activation of different silylated nucleophiles and developed a variety of aldol-type reactions of carbonyl compounds. As a result, different functionalized alcohols and their deriva-tives were prepared through NHC catalysis. Thi