Allenation of Terminal Alkynes for Allene Synthesis

Allenes have been demonstrated to be synthetically versatile building blocks toward complex molecular targets in natural product synthesis, pharmaceutical chemistry, and material sciences. The development of highly efficient methods for allene syntheses from readily available organic reagents is highly desirable. In this chapter, we summarize the development of allenation of terminal alkynes (ATA) with aldehydes or ketones and the applications on the synthesis of the natural allenes as well as some non-allene natural products.