Recent Advances in N-Hyrdoxypthalimide: As a Free Radical Initiator and its Applications

N-Hydroxypthalimide (NHPI) has become a powerful and versatile organocatalyst, it has been known to catalyze various free-radical processes leading to the wide range of organic transformations. Primarily, phthalimido-N-oxyl (PINO) radical formed from NHPI is highly efficient abstraction species for carrying out radical chain reactions. In this review, we have discussed about the most important and successful reactions from last six years, with their plausible reaction mechanisms. This review broadly covers the type of bond formation such as carbon-carbon, carbon-oxygen and carbon-nitrogen bond formations. We have also highlighted various types of reaction strategies where in combination with divergent reagent systems it helps to construct different types of molecules which further find applications in the synthesis of complex set of biologically active molecule. NHPI catalyzed oxidation reactions of different class of organic compounds are also reviewed.