Free Carboxylic Acids: The Trend of Radical Decarboxylative Functionalization

The exceptional versatility of carboxylic acids has been extensively exploited in organic synthesis across several decades. There has been a recent upsurge of radical decarboxylative transformations. The process can be initiated under mild conditions, and the resultant radicals have orthogonal reactivities to closed‐shell species, thus providing immense opportunities for streamlining novel reactions. The use of free carboxylic acids is the most desirable owing to its high atom and step economy. Aiming to demonstrate the attractiveness of the strategy and to inspire chemists to tackle existing challenges, this review outlines the recent advances on radical decarboxylative functionalization of free carboxylic acids. Radical decarboxylation enables the facile access to carbon‐centered radicals. Using native carboxylic acids as the precursors of these open‐shell species, a wide variety of remarkable transformations have been disclosed within the past few years. This review outlines the most recent development to demonstrate the attractiveness of this enabling strategy.