Indan ring frameworks are ubiquitous in a large number of natural products, bioactive and pharmaceutically interesting molecules. Indanones therefore are very useful molecules as starting building blocks for the synthesis of biologically active compounds and thus are of tremendous industrial interest. It is also very useful in organic light-emitting devices, dyes and photoremovable protecting groups. The synthetic methods and application of this kind of molecules are reviewed in this paper.

Key words: indanone, synthesis, application