Ternary Catalysis: A Stepping Stone toward Multicatalysis

The endeavor of mastering Nature-like Multicatalysis in vitro has inspired chemists to develop catalytic systems comprising a variable number of catalysts in one-pot. Having been pioneered in the primitive stages (particularly unary and binary catalysis), the field has witnessed the inception of Ternary Catalysis described as the concept of harnessing an ensemble effect of three discrete catalysts in one-pot. Although the concept is nascent, it has already demonstrated its invaluable importance in terms of producing novel reactivity, prodigious selectivity, and efficiency. As evident from the presented documentation, the number of pertinent reports utilizing ternary catalysis has drastically increased in the past few years; however, these reports remain scattered in the literature. The conceptualization and unambiguous catalyst-dependent classification presented herein provides an imperative unified approach to assemble and categorize all such reports which have remained missing by far. Special emphasis has been given to mechanistic analysis clearly disclosing the beauty of ternary catalysis. For the better understanding of the concept, a succinct description of challenges and problems associated in the development of a ternary catalytic system has been presented. In addition, the Review briefly discusses some of the unsolved problems and possible developments in this field.