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Updated: Oct 9, 2025

Light-driven Enzymatic Decarboxylation
Published on: May 22, 2016
Visible-Light-Driven Bisfunctionalization of Unactivated Olefins via the Merger of Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer
Bei Zhang1, Jian-Qing Qi1, Yuhan Liu1
1School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Key Laboratory of Bioorganic Phosphorous Chemistry & Chemical Biology (Ministry of Education), Center of Basic Molecular Science (CBMS), Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beiing 100084, China.
Abstract:
Herein, we reported an N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) and photo-co-catalyzed alkylacylation of olefins in the presence of the versatile synthon diazo ester, providing a new idea for transient radical generation with the only byproduct being N2. Particularly, this radical process employs traditional carbene precursor diazo esters as the radical source, which is the first case in NHC catalysis. Compared to the previous pathway that produces radicals with large discard fragments, this merged channel possesses great atom economy.
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