Catalytic domino reaction: A promising and economic tool in organic synthesis

Catalytic domino reactions represent preeminent advances in contemporary synthetic organic chemistry to achieve the challenging historical goal of assembling complex molecules from simple starting materials via a one-step protocol. This method not only allows for a large number of transformations to occur successively in a catalytic single step, increasing efficiency and decreasing the purification processes, but it also affords the ability to install molecular complexity rapidly and selectively, providing atom, step, redox, time, and pot economies. Intricate combinations of radical, cationic, anionic, oxidative/reductive, and pericyclic mechanistic steps result in spontaneous cyclizations, additions, fragmentations, ring expansions, and rearrangements, which are typically initiated via photosensitizers, electricity, enzymes, organocatalysts, and transition metals. This perspective highlights recent developments and provides an outlook on the field of catalytic domino processes.