Recent Advances in Silver-Catalyzed Transformations of Electronically Unbiased Alkenes and Alkynes

Silver, as one of the most ancient coinage metals, has attracted a plethora of attention from chemists in recent years due to the easy availability, high catalytic efficiency and multiple functions displayed in various chemical processes. In particular, the research in this field has gained a great progress since 2007 and several elegant reviews have been documented in the literature. However, there has been no systematic review concentrating on the transformations of electronically unbiased alkenes and alkynes under silver catalysis till now, though a rapid development in this area is witnessed. Therefore, this review mainly focuses on the recent advances in silver-catalyzed reactions of different electron-unbiased alkenes and alkynes, covering examples of hydrofunctionalization reactions, difunctionalization reactions, cross-coupling reactions as well as cyclization reactions since 2015 to February 2020. In addition, some interesting mechanisms were also discussed.