Recent Synthetic Transformation of Propargylic Alcohols

Abstract Propargylic alcohols are an important class of synthons in organic chemistry that enable the efficient assembly of natural products, function materials, and biologically and pharmaceutically active molecules due to their distinctive bifunctional nature, characterized by the presence of both alkyne and hydroxyl groups. Over the past few decades, a broader spectrum of innovative and versatile synthetic methodologies employing propargylic alcohols as synthons has been the subject of a great deal of research initiatives. In this review, the state of the art for the selective construction of a significant number of structurally diverse elaborated molecular architectures building on propargylic alcohols are summarized, which can be segmented into six strategic classifications: (1) Construction of ketone compounds; (2) Construction of propargylic derivatives; (3) Construction of olefin derivatives; (4) Metal‐catalyzed cyclization of propargylic alcohols; (5) Metal‐free promoted cyclization of propargylic alcohols; (6) Construction of boron/silicon‐containing building blocks.