When gold can do what iodine cannot do: A critical comparison

Abstract

Gold catalysis has emerged as one of the most dynamic fields in organic synthesis. Only recently, more and more domino processes, for which gold pre-catalysts were found to be outstandingly effective, were paralleled by employing iodine electrophiles in place of gold compounds. This review highlights how, in certain cases, iodonium activation can match gold-catalyzed reactions to construct identical product scaffolds. Likewise, processes are discussed where mostly identical starting materials are transformed into diverse frameworks depending on whether gold or iodonium activation was used to trigger the reaction.