Review of the month : Iron Catalyzed C-H Activation

C-H activation is one of the blooming fields in organocatalysis. As example, the first paper in the Top Five of this issue is related to C-H activation. However, while half of the work being done in this field employs Palladium, other metals have also demonstrated a promising potential. Iron being cheap and non toxic sounds specially interesting for scale up and industrial applications. The review «Direct C-H Transformation via Iron Catalysis» by Shi et al. covers the activation of C-H bonds using iron catalysts and its application into oxidation, C-C and C-N bond formation.

Direct C-H Transformation via Iron Catalysis
Chem. Rev., 2011, 111 (3), pp 1293–1314.
See: 10.1021/cr100198w