Homogenous Gold Catalysis

For a long time there existed only singular, scattered investigationson homogeneous gold-catalyzed reactions. Following a prepeak ofactivity between 1986 and 1998 on a very specific reactivity pattern,from the year 2000 onward an exponential growth of the fieldwas observed. Now, 14 years later, the field has stabilized at highnumbers of yearly publications, but most important, still manynew discoveries are being published. These discoveries do not justrepresent minor variations, but sometimes entirely new reactivitypatterns, unprecedented in the field of organometallic chemistry, arestill found. A shift that was observed only in the last years is thatafter a strong focus on methodology development and mechanisticstudies in the early phase, now increasingly applications in synthesis(both total synthesis of natural products and synthetic applicationsin the field of compounds formaterial science) are reported. Anothernew focus is the development of ligands for highly active catalysts[1].