Issue 39, 2020

Light opens a new window for N-heterocyclic carbene catalysis

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.

Graphical abstract: Light opens a new window for N-heterocyclic carbene catalysis

Article information

Article type
Minireview
Submitted
30 6 2020
Accepted
08 8 2020
First published
11 8 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, 10605-10613

Light opens a new window for N-heterocyclic carbene catalysis

J. Liu, X. Xing, J. Huang, L. Lu and W. Xiao, Chem. Sci., 2020, 11, 10605 DOI: 10.1039/D0SC03595E

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