New strategies and applications using electrophilic cyanide-transfer reagents under transition metal-free conditions

The use of electrophilic cyanide-transfer reagents has become a versatile strategy to access important structural motives in a complementary way compared to other methods. Over the last few years a variety of different reagents have been very successfully employed for the cyanation of different nucleophiles. This article highlights some of the most recent impressive achievements in the field of transition metal-free electrophilic cyanation reactions, which have now become a powerful synthetic tool even with respect to asymmetric transformations.