Aldol Reaction—Homogeneous

Abstract

The aldol reaction is one of the oldest and important methods for the construction of carbon–carbon bonds in organic chemistry. Over the last 30 years, tremendous efforts have resulted in the development of many highly sophisticated and efficient catalytic methods of modern aldol reactions in catalytic chemo‐, regio‐, enantio‐, and diastereoselective manners. This review outlined those efforts in homogeneous catalysis and discussed with selected examples (331 publications) according to the different elemental types of catalysts, for example, transition metals and rare earth metals based Lewis acids, main group metals based catalysts, multifunctional catalysts, and metal‐free catalysts.