An appreciation of free radical chemistry part 5: Free radicals in organic synthesis

Free radical synthetic methodology has grown by leaps and bounds in just about two decades. The limit to which the scope of free radical synthesis can go is restricted only by the imagination of the synthetic chemist. It greatly simplifies a synthetic sequence, makes use of readily available, relatively inexpensive reactants and reagen-ts; the transformations are selective, involve fewer steps, the yields are good, the reaction conditions are mild, etc. Therefore, such free radical reactions truly qualify to be called “Green Chemistry”.