Recent Development of Aryl Diazonium Chemistry for the Derivatization of Aromatic Compounds

Aryl diazonium salts are versatile building blocks in organic synthesis. In light of the ever-increasing importance of aryl diazonium salts spanning most disciplines of the chemical sciences, we review the recent development of aryl diazonium chemistry over the past seven years (2013-2020). Special emphasis is put on various new transformations involving the generation of radical intermediates via thermal, photochemical, and electrochemical means. Recent advances in the development of transition metal-catalyzed reactions using aryl diazonium salts are also reviewed. Together, these newly developed transformations significantly expand the synthetic chemist's repertoire of aromatic carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bond forming methods using aryl diazonium precursors, providing powerful tools for the synthesis and modification of complex molecular scaffolds.