Photoactive chiral structures for light-driven enantioselective carbon-carbon bond-forming reactions

Asymmetric photocatalysis has emerged as a powerful strategy for forming enantioselective carbon-carbon bonds under mild conditions with high levels of enantioselectivity. Within this area, photoactive chiral systems represent an attractive and useful approach, as they eliminate the need for additional photosensitizers by combining the ability of light absorption and chiral induction within a single catalyst framework. Such catalysts act as chiral photosensitizers, enabling efficient harvesting of suitable light, generation of reactive excited states, and stereoselective bond formation. Recent studies demonstrate the effectiveness of this strategy in enantioselective C-C bond-forming reactions such as radical additions, cycloadditions, and cross-couplings. These methods improve efficiency and atom economy while broadening the scope of complex molecule synthesis. This review summarizes recent advances, mechanistic insights, and prospects of photocatalytic enantioselective C-C bond formation using self-sensitizing chiral systems, with relevance to drug discovery and fine chemical synthesis.