Electrochemical Approaches to Carbonylative Coupling Reactions.

The carbonylation reaction is an effective way to introduce CO or other carbonyl groups into organic compounds, and widely used in the preparation of aldehydes, ketones, amides, and esters. The replacement of conventional reaction approaches by greener electrochemical methods is appealing with great synthetic potential as well as inherent safety, owing to the avoidance of external oxidants or reductants and a more facile control in product selectivity. In this minireview, we give a summary of the recent development of carbonylation reactions via the electrochemical approach.