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  • Review Article
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Photocatalytic strategies for the activation of organic chlorides

Abstract

Driven by the continuous demand for sustainable organic synthesis, the field of photocatalysis has emerged as a powerful manifold for direct modification of various chemical compounds. Organic chlorides have not been typically considered as attractive synthetic precursors for these reactions due to their chemical inertness, however, this situation is now rapidly changing. The past five years have witnessed a growing interest in exploring organic chlorides as cheap, readily available and bench-stable substrates for photocatalytic transformations and a number of protocols have already been reported. This Review Article summarises the conceptual ideas behind the developed methods and presents them in the form of synthetic strategies based on how light energy is accumulated in the catalytic system or the way bond energy in the substrate is reduced. The synthetic application of each strategy is also discussed.

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Fig. 1: Photocatalytic activation of organic chlorides.
Fig. 2: Direct SET strategy using visible light.
Fig. 3: Direct SET strategy using high-energy light.
Fig. 4: conPET strategy.
Fig. 5: SenI-ET and electrophotocatalysis strategies.
Fig. 6: Solvated electron and triplet–triplet annihilation strategies.
Fig. 7: Substitution/oxidative addition strategies.
Fig. 8: Strong-base-assistance strategies.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge funding from the National Science Centre, Poland (SONATA 2018/31/D/ST5/00306).

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M.G. designed the work and had a major contribution to researching data, writing and editing the manuscript. M.C.-C. and J.S. contributed equally to the discussion of content, preparation of figures and writing.

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Correspondence to Maciej Giedyk.

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Cybularczyk-Cecotka, M., Szczepanik, J. & Giedyk, M. Photocatalytic strategies for the activation of organic chlorides. Nat Catal 3, 872–886 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-020-00515-8

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