Recent advancement in the synthesis and applications of N-acyl benzotriazoles in organic synthesis

Benzotriazole is an important heterocyclic compound in pharmaceutical and material chemistry, its derivatives have found wide applications for synthetic organic chemistry. N-Acyl benzotriazoles are stable and easy to prepare and employed as mild and selective acylation reagents for N-, O-, S- and C-nucleophiles. This review summarized the recent developments in the following respects: 1) New synthetic methods for N-acyl benzotriazoles; 2) Recent applications of N-acyl benzotriazole derivatives in the acylation reactions to solve some tough synthetic problems; 3) N-acyl benzotriazoles in denitrogenative transformations; 4) N-acyl benzotriazoles in radical and photoredox reactions; and other uncommon synthetic transformations with N-acyl benzotriazoles.