Jean-Mathieu Chretien, Jeremy D. Kilburn, Frangoise Zammattio, Erwan Le

Jean-Mathieu Chretien,Jeremy D. Kilburn, Frangoise Zammattio, Erwan Le Grognec, and Jean-Paul Quintard  

Organotin reagents are well recognised as efficient tools in modern organic synthesis due to their versatility as reagents allowing chemo-, regio- and stereoselective reactions.  

Because of their high tolerance for numerous functionalities, tin hydrides have proved to be invaluable reagents in such simple chemical reactions as the reduction of functional groupsand in many other reactions which proceed via free radical mechanisms. Such has been the reliance on using organotin reagents in free radical chemistry that when efficient homolytic reactions are described without the use of tin reagents, the work is frequently published with phrases such as tin-free radical reactions in the title  

Numerous other useful applications of organotin reagents have been described, for example  

One approach to limit organotin pollution has been to use such reagents as a catalyst, or at least in sub-stoichiometric amounts. For example, the regeneration of an active organotin reagent is often possible in situ using hydrogenosilanes or by reduction with sodium borohydride, but even in these conditions it is impossible to completely avoid tin contamination, even with careful purification. 

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