Single-Electron Strategies in Organometallic Methods: Photoredox, Electrocatalysis, Radical Relay, and Beyond

Abstract

Single-electron strategies that leverage photoredox catalysis, electrocatalysis, and radical relay have provided chemists with powerful tools for driving modern synthetic innovation in organometallic chemistry. They permit access to highly reactive species under extremely mild conditions, when synergistically combined with transition metal catalysis, allowing coupling of non-traditional nucleophiles for challenging bond-forming reactions. In addition, photochemistry and electrochemistry have long been recognized as the most straightforward technologies to facilitate daunting elementary steps through the manipulation of oxidation states of transition metal complexes. In this chapter, prominent examples from the recent literature will be discussed with special emphasis on conceptual advances and new reactivities development.