Boron Catalysis to Expedite the Synthesis of Organic Carbonates from Carbon Dioxide

Global warming and related climate change urgently call for approaches to reduce carbon emissions and simultaneously reuse them as readily available carbon sources. Carbon dioxide (CO2) represents the most familiar one, and conversion of it into useful organic compounds can be both economically and environmentally attractive. To enable these targets, new effective catalysis approaches are warranted allowing for once-captured CO2 to be transformed. In this context, the synthesis of organic carbonates is a primer example of a nonreductive approximation that has been well-studied and -developed over the last two decades. However, the search for alternative catalytic systems for the conversion of CO2 into organic carbonates still continues. The primary incentive involves the expansion of the chemical space covered by these compounds, their functionality and applications and the development of mild and environmentally more attractive catalytic processes. Boron-catalysis, being essentially metal-free, offers various advantages being affordable, amenable to design and presenting high-reactive alternatives for metal-based catalysts. This review covers the most important advances made with boron-catalysis in the area of organic carbonate synthesis focusing on their synthesis methods, mode of action and opportunities they provide to create new cyclic and polymeric carbonate structures.