N-Heterocyclic silylenes in coinage metal chemistry: an account of recent advances

Abstract

This article intends to highlight and comprehensively summarize the recent developments in the field of silylene–coinage metal chemistry. Recent years have witnessed exponential growth in the utilization of N-heterocyclic silylenes as ligands in transition metal chemistry. Still, silylene–coinage metal complexes have only started to appear very recently. Particular attention is focused on the synthetic approaches to silylene–coinage metal complexes and their unusual properties derived from the spectroscopic and crystallographic data. Recent studies have demonstrated that silylene–coinage metal complexes exhibit catalytic efficiency towards hydrosilylation, copper-catalyzed alkyne azide cycloaddition (CuAAC), and glycosidation reactions. Although the chemistry of silylene–coinage metal complexes has only begun to blossom, these findings justify the need for a review at this stage of development. This article will summarize the previous work on silylene–coinage metal complexes followed by recent advances and conclude with future possibilities.