Research from Nolan group at ICIQ reaches the cover in Angewandte Chemie International Edition

The article Golden carousel in catalysis: The cationic gold/propargylic ester cycle (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2008, 47, 718-721), co-authored by Andrea Correa, Nicolas Marion, Louis Fensterbank, Max Malacria, Steven. P. Nolan and Luigi Cavallo, has been distinguished as a Hot Paper and selected by the editors to illustrate the Cover of this issue of Angewandte Chemie, a distinction that for the second time is awarded to our Institute.

The article deals with propargylic esters which are versatile substrates for Au-based catalysts but under typical conditions the starting Au-coordinated propargylic ester is in rapid equilibrium with the gold vinylic carbenoid species and with gold allene species, a number of factors dictating which intermediate is lower in energy and which type of products form.