ABSTRACT
Pericyclic reactions are often highly regio- and stereoselective. Approaches involving these reactions are often high-yielding for synthesising fused eight- and four-membered carbocycles. Unfortunately, most of these methods suffer from highly functionalised starting materials and sometimes involve expensive catalysts. This article reviews Xingwei Li and co-workers’ novel approach for synthesising fused eight- and four-membered carbocycles, which broke through the above two problems the traditional pericyclic approaches faced when constructing the two carbon frameworks above. It is via the C-H activation of less functionalised starting materials catalysed by a manganese(I) catalyst, followed by pericyclic reactions. Manganese is readily available and has low toxicity. This article also introduces the past development of synthesising these two carbon frameworks via pericyclic reactions and the synthesis of the starting materials for these pericyclic reactions via C-H activation.
