Sustainable Wacker‐type Oxidations

International audience ; The Wacker reaction is the oxidation of olefins to ketones and typically require expensive and scarce palladium catalysts in the presence of an additional copper co-catalyst under harsh conditions (acidic media, high pressure of air/dioxygen, elevated temperatures). Such transformation is relevant for industry as shown by the synthesis of acetaldehyde from ethylene as well as for fine chemicals due to the versatility of a carbonyl group placed at specific positions. In this regard, many contributions have focused on controlling the chemo- and regio-selectivity of the olefin oxidation by means of well-defined palladium catalysts under different set of reaction conditions. However, the development of Wacker-type processes avoiding the use of palladium catalysts has just emerged in the last years paving the way for generating more sustainable protocols including milder reaction conditions and green chemistry technologies. In this minireview, we discuss the development of new catalytic processes utilizing more benign catalysts and sustainable reaction conditions.