Transition-Metal Catalysis of Nucleophilic Substitution Reactions: A Radical Alternative to SN1 and SN2 Processes

Classical methods for achieving nucleophilic substitutions of alkyl electrophiles (SN1 and SN2) have limited scope and are not generally amenable to enantioselective variants that employ readily available racemic electrophiles. Radical-based pathways catalyzed by chiral transition-metal complexes provide an attractive approach to addressing these limitations.