Solvomercuration / Demercuration Reactions in Organic Synthesis

The widespread utilization of organometallic reagents in organic synthesis has been one of the major developments in organic chemistry in recent years. The earlier Springer monograph entitled "Organic Synthesis by Means of Trans i- tion Metal Complexes" covered many of the more recent advances in this area. The present volume covers applica- tions of the very valuable solvomercuration-demercuration sequence in organic synthesis. Organomercurials have played an important role in organic chemistry for over a century. They have been known since 1852 and major monographs covering their chemistry have appeared in 1921 ("Organic Compounds of Mercury" by F. C. Whitmore), 1967 ("The Organic Compounds of Mercury", volume 4 in the series "Methods of Elemento- Organic Chemistry", edited by L. G. Makarova and A. N. Nesmeyanov) and 1974 ("Metallorganische Verbindungen- Hg", Houben-Weyl: Methoden der Organischen Chemie, 4th ed., Vol. 13/2b, edited by H. Staub, K. P. Zeller and H. Leditsche). My own personal interest in the application of organo- mercurials in organic synthesis goes back to the late 1960s when I first became involved in the development of new synthetic routes to organomercurials. In 1976 I wrote a chapter entitled "Organomercurials as Reagents and Inter- mediates in Organic Synthesis" for a book entitled "New Applications of Organometallic Reagents in Organic Syn- thesis". That chapter was subsequently pared down to a brief review article in Angewandte Chemie which appeared in 1978 and a further article in Tetrahedron Reports in 1982.