Recent Advances in Transition-Metal-Catalyzed C–H Addition to Nitriles

Abstract Transition-metal-catalyzed C–H bond addition to nitriles has emerged as a powerful synthetic approach for the construction of C–C bonds in organic synthesis. Due to the merits of atom- and step-economy, as well the easy availability of the starting materials, these transformations not only deliver acyclic aryl ketone products with nitriles­ as C-building blocks, but can also be utilized for the highly efficient­ assembly of azaheterocyclic skeletons using nitriles as C–N building blocks. This short review summarizes recent progress on transition-metal-catalyzed C–C bond-forming reactions based on C(sp2)–H and C(sp3)–H additions to nitriles. 1 Introduction 2 Palladium-Catalyzed C–H Addition to Nitriles 2.1 Palladium-Catalyzed C–H Addition to Nitriles for the Preparation of Ketone (Imine) Products 2.2 Palladium-Catalyzed C–H Addition to Nitriles for the Preparation of Azaheterocycles 2.3 Palladium-Catalyzed C–H Addition to Nitriles/1,2-Rearangement 3 Other Transition-Metal-Catalyzed C–H Additions to Nitriles 4 Summary and Outlook