Issue 30, 2020

GaN nanowires as a reusable photoredox catalyst for radical coupling of carbonyl under blacklight irradiation

Abstract

Employing photo-energy to drive the desired chemical transformation has been a long pursued subject. The development of homogeneous photoredox catalysts in radical coupling reactions has been truly phenomenal, however, with apparent disadvantages such as the difficulty in separating the catalyst and the frequent requirement of scarce noble metals. We therefore envisioned the use of a hyper-stable III–V photosensitizing semiconductor with a tunable Fermi level and energy band as a readily isolable and recyclable heterogeneous photoredox catalyst for radical coupling reactions. Using the carbonyl coupling reaction as a proof-of-concept, herein, we report a photo-pinacol coupling reaction catalyzed by GaN nanowires under ambient light at room temperature with methanol as a solvent and sacrificial reagent. By simply tuning the dopant, the GaN nanowire shows significantly enhanced electronic properties. The catalyst showed excellent stability, reusability and functional tolerance. All reactions could be accomplished with a single piece of nanowire on Si-wafer.

Graphical abstract: GaN nanowires as a reusable photoredox catalyst for radical coupling of carbonyl under blacklight irradiation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
12 May 2020
Accepted
30 Jun 2020
First published
01 Jul 2020
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2020,11, 7864-7870

GaN nanowires as a reusable photoredox catalyst for radical coupling of carbonyl under blacklight irradiation

M. Liu, L. Tan, R. T. Rashid, Y. Cen, S. Cheng, G. Botton, Z. Mi and C. Li, Chem. Sci., 2020, 11, 7864 DOI: 10.1039/D0SC02718A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements