Catalyst-Free Organic Synthesis At Room Temperature in Aqueous and Non-Aqueous Media: An Emerging Field of Green Chemistry Practice and Sustainability

The last decade has seen a tremendous outburst in modifying chemical processes to make them 'green' or at least acceptable so as to attain sustainability of our environment. People are keen to know new inventions in the field of chemistry but at the same time, they are also eager to know how far the newly developed processes are benign to us! Hence, alternative benign organic methodologies have become an imperative part of organic syntheses and chemical reactions. Role of catalysts in organic synthesis is obvious and thus they find huge applications and uses. Efforts have been made to reduce toxicity level of catalysts by multidirectional modifications, but the most fruitful way is to design an organic reaction without catalyst(s), if feasible! If this important achievement can be coupled with energy consideration, one of the most alarming issues in the 21st Century, then it would be the great as far green chemistry practice and sustainability are concerned. The present review summarizes the latest developments on catalyst-free organic reactions reported during the last decade with a focus on such reactions occurring in aqueous and non-aqueous media under room temperature condition. Various named reactions, one-pot multi-component reactions, condensations, oxidations, ring opening of epoxides and the synthesis of various pharmaceutically important heterocyclic compounds are discussed among others.