Recent developments in electrosynthesis of nitriles and electrocatalytic cyanations

Nitrile compounds are a class of high-value chemicals and versatile intermediates which can easily be transformed into a variety of useful products bearing functional groups such as carboxyl, carbamoyl, aminomethyl, ketyl and heterocyclic derivatives. Various thermal catalytic cyanation procedures have been devised and scaled up industrially while developing alternative methods are actively pursued. The access to these classes of molecules electrochemically offers greener alternatives to their preparation. The development of electrochemical synthesis of cyano-containing compounds under mild conditions with low energy consumption will imminently become indispensable approaches for industrial production of nitriles. The electrochemical cyanation presents many challenges from the toxicity of cyanide to the development of catalysts and the design of electrochemical cells. Electrochemical cyanation reaction offers promise to conveniently accessing nitriles but still requires efficient electro-catalysts, safe protocols and scale up considerations. This review discusses recent progress in the field of electrochemical synthesis of nitrile compounds placing emphasis on electro-synthetic and electro-catalytic mechanism aspects while making reference to original works to highlight the progress in this area.