Organocatalyzed Carbonylation of Alkyl Halides Driven by Visible Light.

Herein, we describe a new strategy for the carbonylation of alkyl halides with different nucleophiles to generate valuable carbonyl derivatives under visible light irradiation. This method is mild, robust, highly selective, and proceeds under metal-free conditions to prepare a range of structurally diverse esters and amides in good to excellent yields. In addition, we highlight the application of this activation strategy for 13C isotopic incorporation. We propose that the reaction proceeds by a photoinduced reduction to afford radical anions from alkyl halides, which undergo subsequent single electron-oxidation to form a carbocationic intermediate. Carbon monoxide is trapped by the carbocation to generate an acylium cation, which can be attacked by a series of nucleophiles to give a range of carbonyl products.

Halide Noninnocence and Direct Photoreduction of Ni(II) Enables Coupling of Aryl Chlorides in Dual Catalytic, Carbon-Heteroatom Bond-Forming Reactions.

Recent mechanistic studies of dual photoredox/Ni-catalyzed, light-driven cross-coupling reactions have found that the photocatalyst (PC) operates through either reductive quenching or energy transfer cycles. To date, reports invoking oxidative quenching cycles are comparatively rare and direct observation of such a quenching event has not been reported. However, when PCs with highly reducing excited states are used (e.g., Ir(ppy)3), photoreduction of Ni(II) to Ni(I) is thermodynamically feasible. Recently, a unified reaction system using Ir(ppy)3 was developed for forming C-O, C-N, and C-S bonds under the same conditions, a prospect that is challenging with PCs that can photooxidize these nucleophiles. Herein, in a detailed mechanistic study of this system, we observe oxidative quenching of the PC (Ir(ppy)3 or a phenoxazine) via nanosecond transient absorption spectroscopy. Speciation studies support that a mixture of Ni-bipyridine complexes forms under the reaction conditions, and the rate constant for photoreduction increases when more than one ligand is bound. Oxidative addition of an aryl iodide was observed indirectly via oxidation of the resulting iodide by Ir(IV)(ppy)3. Intriguingly, the persistence of the Ir(IV)/Ni(I) ion pair formed in the oxidative quenching step was found to be necessary to simulate the observed kinetics. Both bromide and iodide anions were found to reduce the oxidized form of the PC back to its neutral state. These mechanistic insights inspired the addition of a chloride salt additive, which was found to alter Ni speciation, leading to a 36-fold increase in the initial turnover frequency, enabling the coupling of aryl chlorides.

Designing High-Triplet-Yield Phenothiazine Donor-Acceptor Complexes for Photoredox Catalysis.

Phenothiazine, owing to its ease of oxidation and modularity with respect to facile functionalization, is an attractive central chemical unit from which to construct highly reducing organic photoredox catalysts. While design improvements have been made in the community, the yield of intersystem crossing (ΦISC), which determines access to the long-lived triplet excited state, has yet to be systematically optimized. Herein, we explore the impacts of N-aryl substituent variation on excited-state dynamics using picosecond to millisecond transient absorption and emission spectroscopies. Design principles are uncovered that center on controlling the energy of an intermediate charge transfer (CT) state within the singlet excited-state manifold, which, in turn, dictates the yield of CT-state formation and the rate constants for its depletion. Ultimately, we find ΦISC to be highly sensitive to the electron-withdrawing character of the N-aryl electron acceptor in the aforementioned CT state, with ΦISC ranging from ∼0 to 0.96.

Bromine Radical Catalysis by Energy Transfer Photosensitization.

We report here a mild, safe, and user-friendly bromine radical catalysis system that enables efficient [3 + 2] cycloaddition of diversely substituted vinyl- and ethynylcyclopropanes with a broad range of alkenes, including drug-like molecules and pharmaceuticals. Key to the success is the use of photosensitizing triplet-state ß-fragmentation of a judiciously selected precatalyst, cinnamyl bromide, to generate bromine radicals in a controlled manner using parts per million-level photocatalyst (i.e., 4CzIPN) loading.