Recent Advances in Nano-Gold-Catalyzed Green Synthesis and Clean Reactions

There has been a surge of interest in using supported gold catalysts in green synthesis and clean reactions. Complementary to their traditional platinum-group metal counterparts, catalysis using nano-gold offers a unique opportunity to obtain target products in high yields, control the chemoselectivity, and access more complex organic molecules in a compact, atom- and step-efficient way. Therefore, it has emerged as a hot topic in the field of green catalysis. This review summarizes our research progress in the area of nano-Au catalyzed green reactions and their versatility, application in clean chemical synthesis, especially for the construction of N-containing compounds as well as valorization of biomass-derived feedstocks via gold catalyzed transformations.