SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE
Light opens a new window for N-heterocyclic carbene catalysis
*a
and
Wen-Jing
Xiao
*a
Abstract
N-Heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) are efficient Lewis basic catalysts for the umpolung of various polarized unsaturated compounds usually including aldehydes, imines, acyl chlorides and activated esters. NHC catalysis involving electron pair transfer steps has been extensively studied; however, NHC catalysis through single-electron transfer (SET) processes, despite having the potential to achieve chemical transformations of inert chemical bonds and using green reagents, has long been a challenging task in organic synthesis. In parallel, visible-light-induced photocatalysis and photoexcitation have been established as powerful tools to facilitate sustainable organic synthesis, as they enable the generation of various reactive radical intermediates under extremely mild conditions. Recently, a number of elegant visible-light-induced, NHC-catalyzed transformations were developed for accessing valuable organic compounds. As a result, this minireview will highlight the recent advances in this field.
- This article is part of the themed collections: 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – Asymmetric Organocatalysis, Most popular 2019-2020 review articles and Celebrating 10 years of Chemical Science
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