Transition Metal Catalysis in Micellar Media: Much More Than a Simple Green Chemistry Promise

The micellar approach, whose major feature is the possibility to operate in water as the reaction medium, is already a major tool in the hands of synthetic organic chemists and is on the way to become an important green technology with ubiquitous fields of application. Surfactants are self-assembling auxiliaries, widely available on the market, that need no special technique to be used but are simply added to water. They allow the use of transition metal complexes developed for work in organic solvents, already optimized by ordinary synthetic elaboration without any special modification to make them compatible with water. Their use does not require any significant plant design or operational changes in the industrial practice while simplifying the separation processes.