Abstract
Biorefinery aims at the conversion of biomass and renewable feedstocks into fuels and platform chemicals,in analogy to conventional oil refinery. In the past years, the scientific community has defined a number ofprimary building blocks that can be obtained by direct biomass decomposition. However, the large potentialof this “renewable chemical space” to contribute to the generation of value added bio-active compoundsand materials still remains unexplored. In general, biomass derived building blocks feature a diverse range ofchemical functionalities. In order to be integrated into value-added compounds, they require additionalfunctionalization and/or covalent modification thereby generating secondary building blocks. The lattercan be thus regarded as functional components of bio-active molecules or materials and represent anexpansion of the renewable chemical space. This perspective highlights the most recent developmentsand opportunities for the synthesis of secondary biomass derived building blocks and their application tothe preparation of value added products.