Catalytic Reductive Alcohol Etherifications with Carbonyl-Based Compounds or CO2 and Related Transformations for the Synthesis of Ether Derivatives

Ether derivatives have myriad applications in several areas of chemical industry and academia. Hence, the development of more effective and sustainable protocols for their production is highly desired. Among the different methodologies reported for ether synthesis, catalytic reductive alcohol etherifications with carbonyl-based moieties (aldehydes/ketones and carboxylic acid derivatives) have emerged in the last years as a potential tool. These processes constitute appealing routes for the selective production of both symmetrical and asymmetrical ethers (including O-heterocycles) with an increased molecular complexity. Likewise, ester-to-ether catalytic reductions and hydrogenative alcohol etherifications with CO to dialkoxymethanes and other acetals, albeit in less extent, have undergone important advances, too. In this Review, an update of the recent progresses in the area of catalytic reductive alcohol etherifications using carbonyl-based compounds and CO have been described with a special focus on organic synthetic applications and catalyst design. Complementarily, recent progress made in catalytic acetal/ketal-to-ether or ester-to-ether reductions and other related transformations have been also summarized. This work was supported by the SEJI (Subvencions Excelencia Juniors Investigadors, grants SEJI/2019/006 and SEJI/2020/013) program funding from Generalitat Valenciana and RETOS I+D+i program from MICINN (PID2019-109656RA-I0 / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033). C. L.-G. and L. I.-A. thanks to the SEJI project for the contract. R. A. thanks to the project that gave rise to these results that received the support of a fellowship from ”La Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434). The fellowship code is LCF/BQ/PI18/11630023. J. R. C.-A. thanks to MICINN from Spanish Government for a Ramón y Cajal contract (ref. RYC-2017-22717).