Visible Light-Induced Transition Metal Catalysis

Abstract

In recent years, visible light-induced transition metal catalysis has emerged as a new paradigm in organic photocatalysis, which has led to the discovery of unprecedented transformations as well as the improvement of known reactions. In this subfield of photocatalysis, a transition metal complex serves a double duty by harvesting photon energy and then enabling bond forming/breaking events mostly via a single catalytic cycle, thus contrasting the established dual photocatalysis in which an exogenous photosensitizer is employed. In addition, this approach often synergistically combines catalyst–substrate interaction with photoinduced process, a feature that is uncommon in conventional photoredox chemistry. This Review describes the early development and recent advances of this emerging field.

Organometallic catalysis under visible light activation: benefits and preliminary rationales

“…The ability to harness visible light to access energy transfer reactivity is another emerging field of profound impact in organic synthesis [4,5]. Recently, further developments have revealed the ability of light to interact directly with organometallic complexes involved in the cross-coupling catalytic cycle (rather than the photocatalyst) inducing novel and unique bond-breaking/forming reactivities, thereby expanding the diversity of possible chemical transformations [6,7]. In this context, light can be used to induce or accelerate a reaction step.…”

Rose Bengal-photocatalyzed perfluorohexylation reactions of organic substrates in water. Applications to late-stage syntheses

“…On the other hand, visible light photocatalysis [2][3][4][5][6] has progressed as a powerful tool to enable organic synthetic transformations using organo(metallic) photocatalysts that affect electron transfer sequences promoting the formation of reactive radical or radical ion species which facilitate organic reactions and bypass the need for direct substrate irradiation.…”

Visible Light-Induced Aerobic Oxidative Dehydrogenation of C–N/C–O to C=N/C=O Bonds Using Metal-Free Photocatalysts: Recent Developments

“…Among all the photocatalysts, transition metal-based compounds [11][12][13][14], metal-free molecules [3,[15][16][17][18][19] and semiconductors [20,21] are the most utilized. These promoters have been applied successfully to many photochemical transformations, such as oxidations [22][23][24][25][26], cycloadditions [27][28][29][30], C-H bond functionalizations [31][32][33][34], photoredox reactions [6,16,17,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] and even enantioselective reactions [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51].…”