Anatomy of Long-Lasting Love Affairs with Lithium Carbenoids: Past and Present Status and Future Prospects

After a long adolescence, the chemistry of lithium carbenoids has currently been entering its maturity bringing a dowry of a more in-depth and less empirical knowledge of the structure and configurational stability of such double-faced intermediates; this, thanks in particular to the synergistic and harmonic cooperation between calculations and the most modern NMR techniques now at our disposal. Such a knowledge has stimulated the development of fruitful stereoselective applications in the field of organic synthesis providing as well a rationale to observed selectivities. Such aspects together with the role played by aggregation and solvation on the structure-reactivity relationship have been highlighted throughout this Minireview with selected examples extracted from recent literature