A short review: Chemo-catalytic CO2 insertion in amine and amino alcohols to produce linear and cyclic carbamates

The adverse effect of carbon dioxide occurred in past decade on environment, led researchers to use CO₂ as a C1 building block for the synthesis of various commodity chemicals. Most of the drug molecules and polymers have back bone of carbon chain which provides great opportunity to researchers, to make use of CO₂ as an abundant and renewable source of carbon. Chemo-catalytic synthesis of industrially important cyclic and open chain carbamate using amino alcohol/alcohol and amine in presence of CO₂ as carbonylating agent has got much more attention in recent years. This review focuses on the literature survey from 1986 to 2022 on carbamate synthesis and provides clear idea about prerequisite active sites in catalyst for the activation of CO₂ which is a major challenge. The details of mechanism proposed for the chemo-catalytic pathway has been discussed in detail in order to understand and design the novel and efficient catalyst system in near future in this demanding research field.