Photochemical Mn-Mediated Generation of Azide Radicals for Improvement of Alkene Hydroxyazidation.

State-of-the-art strategies for alkene-hydroxyazidation, which yield a mixture of ß-azido alcohol and ß-azido peroxide, must rely on phosphine reagents to improve the chemoselectivity. To overcome the above problems, we present a photochemical hydroxyazidation of alkenes via Mn-mediated ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT) in O2, which activates N3- to •N3 and incorporates O2 to be used as an oxygen source in the hydroxyazidation products. Broad alkene range and step-economy chemistry for the hydroxyazidation transformation were also demonstrated.