N-Heterocyclic carbenes, despite being isolated and characterized three decades ago, still capture scientists’ interest as versatile, modular and strongly coordinating moieties. In the last decade, driven by the increasingly refined fundamental understanding of their behaviour, the emergence of new carbene frameworks and cogent sustainability issues, N-heterocyclic carbenes have experienced a tremendous increase in utilization across several disparate fields. In this Review, a concise overview of N-heterocyclic carbenes encompassing their history, properties and applications in transition metal catalysis, on-surface chemistry, main group chemistry and organocatalysis is provided. Emphasis is placed on developments emerging in the last seven years and on envisaging future directions.

N-杂环卡宾尽管在 30 年前就已被分离和表征，但作为多用途、模块化和强配位的部分仍然引起科学家的兴趣。在过去十年中，由于对其行为的基本理解日益完善、新卡宾框架的出现和令人信服的可持续性问题，N-杂环卡宾在几个不同领域的应用有了巨大的增长。在这篇综述中，简要概述了 N-杂环卡宾，包括它们的历史、性质和在过渡金属催化、表面化学、主族化学和有机催化中的应用。重点放在过去七年的发展和展望未来的方向上。