Magnesium/Methanol

Introduction

Mg/MeOH has proved to be a very useful reagent for various organic transformations. All the organic trans­formations using this reagent are carried out at room temperature. Anhydrous methanol is used for the reactions involving Mg/MeOH. The mildness, ease of availability of magnesium, both commercially and its natural abundance, coupled with convenient reaction conditions makes this reagent a useful choice over other methods which are expensive, toxic, and inconvenient. These aspects of this reagent are exemplified in the reductive cyclization of activated dienes where toxic and expensive reagents such as Bu₃SnH and SmI₂ are used.

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