Hydroformylation of olefins by metals other than rhodium

Metal catalyzed hydroformylation of alkenes is an atom economic transformation to construct useful aldehydes and is being industrially practiced for decades. The most commonly used metal for this transformation on an industrial scale is rhodium. However, rhodium is rare, costly, and is depleting at a skyrocketing rate. Therefore, finding a suitable alternative to rhodium for metal-catalyzed hydroformylation has been on the radar of many academic and industrial researchers. This review presents the scientific advancements reported in the hydroformylation reaction using metals other than rhodium. An overview of recent progress in palladium, iridium, ruthenium, cobalt, platinum, and iron-catalyzed hydroformylation is presented. Hydroformylation of alkenes and alkynes, using syngas as well as syngas surrogates is examined. The evaluation of the current status of non-rhodium metals in hydroformylation suggests that the field is still in a nascent stage and, except cobalt, no other metal poses a significant challenge to the dominance of rhodium. Deep mechanistic understanding of rate-limiting elementary steps in the non-rhodium metals is largely missing and thus only limited success is reported. Intense research on ligand design, mechanistic understanding, and choice of non-rhodium metal precursors may change this scenario in near future.