Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in multicomponent
reactions (MCRs) as environmental benign and reliable synthetic strategies
for drug discovery. Though MCRs have been significantly explored in
photoredox-transition metal dual catalysis, photocatalyst-copper dual
catalysis is quite underdeveloped due to an unclear mechanistic basis.
Herein, we discuss theoretical investigations unraveling the mechanistic
avenues in IrIII-CuII dual catalyzed MCRs of
a carboxylic acid (as an alkyl radical precursor X•), [1.1.1]propellane
and a N-nucleophile leading to three component C–N
coupled products, experimentally reported by MacMillan. We investigated
the radical formation pathway, defined the favored photoredox catalytic
cycle, and found the favorable reaction pathway within the Cu-catalytic
cycle, and finally we elucidated the origin of selectivity between
three-component and two-component coupling products. Our computations
suggest that the N–H bond activation is the rate-limiting step.
The preference for a two-component coupling product over a three-component
product is governed by the relative stabilities of the CuII-X• intermediates. Energy decomposition analysis reveals a
fairly strong correlation existing between the energy span for the
three-component product generation and stabilizing electrostatic interaction
within the CuII and X• fragments in
CuII-X•.