Photoredox Catalysis for the Generation of Carbon Centered Radicals

Radical chemistry has witnessed over the last decades important advances that have positioned it as a methodology of choice in synthetic chemistry. A number of great attributes such as specific reactivities, the knowledge of the kinetics of most elementary processes, the functional group tolerance, and the possibility to operate cascade sequences are clearly responsible for this craze. Nevertheless, at the end of the last century, radical chemistry appeared plagued by several hurdles to overcome such as the use of environmentally problematic mediators or the impossibility of scale up. While the concept of photocatalysis was firmly established in the coordination chemistry community, its diffusion in organic synthetic chemistry remained sporadic for decades until the end of the 2000s with the breakthrough merging of organocatalysis and photocatalysis by the MacMillan group and contemporary reports by the groups of Yoon and Stephenson. Since then, photoredox catalysis has enjoyed particularly active and intense developments. It is now the topic of a still increasing number of publications featuring various applications from asymmetric synthesis, total synthesis of natural products, and polymerization to process (flow) chemistry. In this Account, we survey our own efforts in this domain, focusing on the elaboration of new photocatalytic pathways that could lead to the efficient generation of C-centered functionalized alkyl and aryl radicals. Both reductive and oxidative manifolds are accessible through photoredox catalysis, which has guided us along these lines in our projects. Thus, we studied the photocatalytic reduction of onium salts such as sulfoniums and iodoniums for the production of the elusive aryl radical intermediates. Progressing to more relevant chemistry for synthesis, we examined the cleavage of C-O and the C-Br bonds for the generation of alkyl C-centered radicals. Activated epoxides could serve as valuable substrates of a photocatalyzed variant of the Nugent-RajanBabu-Gansäuer homolytic cleavage of epoxides. Using imidazole based carbamates, we could also devise the first photocatalyzed Barton-McCombie deoxygenation reaction. Finally, bromophenylacetate can be reduced using the [Au2(μ-dppm)2]Cl2 photocatalyst under UVA or visible-light. This was used for the initiation of the controlled atom transfer radical polymerization of methacrylates and acrylates in solution or laminate. Our next endeavors concerned the photocatalyzed oxidation of stabilized carbanions such as enolates of 1,3-dicarbonyl substrates, trifluoroborates, and more extensively bis-catecholato silicates. Because of their low oxidation potentials, the later have proved to be exquisite sources of radical entities, which can be engaged in diverse intermolecular reactions such as vinylation, alkynylation, and conjugate additions. The bis-catecholato silicates were also shown to behave as excellent partners of dual photoredox-nickel catalysis leading in an expeditious manner to libraries of cross coupling products.