Advances in transition-metal catalyzed hydroxycarbonylation reactions in aqueous-organic two-phase system

A survey of the literature related to the aqueous organometallic chemistry and catalysis shows that the interest in the carbonylation reactions in two-phase systems has remarkably grown during the five last years and that most of carbonylation reactions conducted in homogeneous medium, i.e., the carbonylation of benzyl chloride, bromobenzene, allylic halides, phenethylbromide and olefins have been successfully applied under biphasic conditions. With allylic halides and benzyl alcohol, the catalytic activities appear even much higher than those obtained in homogeneous systems. Nevertheless the lack of stability of palladium–water soluble phosphine based catalyst often observed limits its reuse and constitutes at the present the major drawback of these processes.