Recent progress on donor and donor–donor carbenes

Donor and donor–donor carbenes are two important kinds of carbenes, which have experienced tremendous growth in the past two decades. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the recent development of donor and donor–donor carbene chemistry. The development of this chemistry offers efficient protocols to construct a wide variety of C–C and C–X bonds in organic synthesis. This review is organized based on the different types of carbene precursors, including diazo compounds, hydrazones, enynones, cycloheptatrienes and cyclopropenes. The typical transformations, the reaction mechanisms, as well as their subsequent applications in the synthesis of complex natural products and bioactive molecules are discussed. Due to the rapidly increasing interest in this area, we believe that this review will provide a timely and comprehensive discussion of recent progress in donor and donor–donor carbene chemistry.