A visible-light-driven transfer hydrogenation of carbonyl and CQC compounds has been developed by coupling CdS nanoparticles with iridium complexes, exhibiting high activities, excellent selectivities and a unique pH-dependent catalytic activity.The use of light, particularly visible light, as the driving force for chemical reactions has attracted much attention of organic chemists.1,2 One fundamental impediment for classical photochemical reactions is the use of high-energy UV, which often induces undesired by-products due to the unselective excitation processes. The major present strategy to address this drawback is the use of photosensitizers or semiconductors to selectively activate reactants. For instance, the well-known photoredox catalyst tris(2,2 0 -bipyridyl)ruthenium(II) complexes [Ru(bpy) 3 ]
2+and its derivatives have been used as the electron transfer reagent to selectively activate special reactants such as aryl enones, a-carbonyl and a-aryl halogen derivatives, which initiate such photochemistry reactions as cycloaddition, 3 dehalogenation 4 and asymmetric alkylation reactions.
5,6Visible-light-response semiconductors have been mainly used for the selective oxidation reactions, by activating O 2 and avoiding the induction of strong, nonselective hydroxyl radicals. 7,8 Upon irradiation, the excited state of the molecules interacts with reactants, undergoing the electron-transfer processes, which plays a crucial role for the activation of reactants for most reactions. However, the direct electron-transfer between excited photosensitizers/semiconductors and reactants is often difficult. It is often limited by the oxidation/reduction potential of photosensitizers/semiconductors and needs to directly overcome the high energy barrier. The rational design of light-driven reactions using the strategy of activating reactants requires the insight of interaction between reactants and the excited state of photosensitizers/semiconductors. Thereby, the present strategy of activating reactants is restrained to reactions involving special molecules.An alternative solution is the introduction of the functioncatalyzed molecules, such as organometallic complexes, as electron mediators between reactants and photosensitizers/ semiconductors. These complexes can play a role as co-catalysts, activated by photoexcited electron-transfer processes and subsequently initiate the catalytic reactions (Scheme 1). It is well-known that organometallic complexes are very efficient catalysts for various organic reactions as well as excellent electron acceptors. The strategy to activate catalyst rather than reactants has inherent merits: (1) facilitating the charge separation process in space; (2) reducing the energy barrier of reactants by multistep electron-transfer; (3) ensuring the selectivities of reactions with complexes as active sites; (4) designing rationally the reactions according to the well-known research on organometallic chemistry. Herein, we report an example of photocatalytic transfer hydrogenation of carbonyl and C...