Selectivity in micellar catalysed reactions: The role of interfacial dipole, compartmentalisation, and specific interactions with the surfactants

Micellar catalysis is playing a major role in green chemistry with ever increasing applications in the efficient and sustainable preparation of natural compounds, drugs, and more recently organic semiconductors for printed electronics. Most of the contributions in the field focus on the developments of surfactants and suitable formulative conditions capable of reproducing – and often improving – the yield of reactions commonly performed in organic solvents. The real ambition of the micellar catalysis approach goes beyond the improvement in the sustainability of existing methods and aims at mimicking not only the efficiency but also the selectivity of enzymatic catalysis. This review summarizes relevant examples of micellar catalysis enabled, efficient, and selective transformations, and discusses the different kind of processes impacting on the product distribution depending on the details of the formulative state achieved.