Chemical Reduction of CO Facilitated by C-nucleophiles

The abundance of atmospheric CO presents both an opportunity and a challenge for synthetic chemists to transform CO into value-added products. A promising strategy involves CO reduction driven by the energy stored in chemical bonds and promoted by molecules containing nucleophilic carbon sites. This approach allows the synthesis of new C-C or C-H bonds from CO-derived carbon. The first part of this Feature article deals with uncatalyzed reductions of CO such as insertion into metal-carbon bonds and reactivity towards multidentate actor ligands and metal-free compounds. The second part covers catalytic reduction of CO in which a nucleophilic C-site is involved. This review brings together two general approaches in the chemical CO reduction field, showing how the discovery of fundamental reactivity of CO leads to synthetic applications, and proposes directions for further development.