Iodine‐Catalyzed or ‐Mediated Reactions in Aqueous Medium

Abstract Transition metal‐catalyzed reactions are the heart of modern organic synthetic chemistry. In most cases, the synthesis of target molecules involved at least one or more transition metals such as palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, platinum, iridium, rhenium, cobalt, copper, iron, etc. But these transition metals are costly, toxic, and sometimes very difficult to separate from the target product. Instead of transition metals, molecular iodine or iodide salts have drawn the attention of modern organic synthetic chemists over a few decades due to their inexpensiveness, tolerance, and environmentally benign nature. So molecular iodine or iodide catalyzed reactions are highly efficient, atom‐economical, easy to control, eco‐ friendly protocol rather than transition metal‐catalyzed reactions. But many iodine‐catalyzed or mediated reactions, toxic solvents like tetrahydrofuran (THF), 1,4 dioxane, dimethylacetamide (DMA), dimethylformamide (DMF), benzene, toluene, chlorobenzene, nitrobenzene, n‐hexane, etc. are used which is a major concern in terms of environmental issues. Therefore, our present endeavour focuses on the recent developments ( mainly in the period 2005 – 2020 ) of the iodine‐catalyzed or iodine‐mediated various reactions like oxidative additions, condensation reactions, C−C, C−N, C−O, C−S cross‐couplings etc. consciously performed in an aqueous medium to avoid environmental hazardous, which is a thrust area to the young researchers.