Recent Advances in the Enantioselective Radical Reactions.

The review covers research published since 2017 and is focused on enantioselective synthesis using radical reactions. It describes recent approaches to the asymmetric synthesis of chiral molecules based on the application of the metal catalysis, dual metal and organocatalysis and finally, pure organocatalysis including enzyme catalysis. This review focuses on the synthetic aspects of the methodology and tries to show which compounds can be obtained in enantiomerically enriched forms.

Dehydrogenation and α-functionalization of secondary amines by visible-light-mediated catalysis.

A visible-light-mediated process for dehydrogenation of amines has been described. The given protocol showed a broad substrate scope, mild reaction conditions and excellent results without the requirement of tedious purification. This process can be applied in one-pot functionalization of secondary amines with various nucleophiles through the cooperation of visible-light and Lewis acid catalysis, leading to the structurally varied essential components of biologically active molecules. In addition, Stern-Volmer studies and quenching experiments revealed the role of a catalyst and led to the proposed mechanism of this transformation.

LED pumped polymer laser sensor for explosives.

A very compact explosive vapor sensor is demonstrated based on a distributed feedback polymer laser pumped by a commercial InGaN light-emitting diode. The laser shows a two-stage turn on of the laser emission, for pulsed drive currents above 15.7 A. The 'double-threshold' phenomenon is attributed to the slow rise of the ∼30 ns duration LED pump pulses. The laser emits a 533 nm pulsed output beam of ∼10 ns duration perpendicular to the polymer film. When exposed to nitroaromatic model explosive vapors at ∼8 ppb concentration, the laser shows a 46% change in the surface-emitted output under optimized LED excitation.