Recent advances on micellar catalysis in water

Abstract Water is the universal solvent in nature to catalyze the biological transformation processes. However, due to the immiscibility of many reagents in water, synthetic chemistry relies heavily on organic solvent. Micellar media is a green alternative to traditional petroleum feedstock derived solvents, which is recently attracting increasing attention. The present review deals with the recent advances of micellar catalysis with an emphasis on the new “tailor-made” surfactants for various reactions. A brief overview of commercial surfactants, including anionic micelles, cationic micelles and nonionic micelles were presented. More importantly, we attempted to discuss systematically the recent research progress on new surfactants by introducing structures, micellar effects and recycling, aiming to serve as the basis for future developing of surfactants.