Abstract
Photoredox catalysis has been applied to renewable energy and green chemistry for many years. Ruthenium and iridium, which can be used as photoredox catalysts, are expensive and scarce in nature. Thus, the further development of catalysts based on these transition metals is discouraged. Alternative photocatalysts based on copper complexes are widely investigated, because they are abundant and less expensive. This review discusses the scope and application of photoinduced copper-based catalysis along with recent progress in this field. The special features and mechanisms of copper photocatalysis and highlights of the applications of the copper complexes to photocatalysis are reported. Copper-photocatalyzed reactions, including alkene and alkyne functionalization, organic halide functionalization, and alkyl C–H functionalization that have been reported over the past 5 years, are included.
Highlights
Solar light is an inexhaustible and free energy source for green plants and bacteria
Organic dyes have the advantages of having a low price and not containing metals; they suffer from relatively poor photostability [14,15,16]
Upon absorbing a photon, CuI undergoes a reorganization from a tetrahedral geometry to a square-planar geometry, thereby resulting in a shorter excited state lifetime compared with ruthenium and iridium-based photocatalysts and limiting the application of CuI complexes to visible-light-mediated organic syntheses [22,31]
Summary
Solar light is an inexhaustible and free energy source for green plants and bacteria. Transition-metal-photoredox catalysts, such as ruthenium and iridium polypyridyl complexes, exhibit high redox potentials, long excited state lifetimes, and strong absorption [17,18,19,20]. Copper salts have become popular materials for photoredox catalysts due to their abundance, low cost, and ability to provide strong photoexcited reducing power [21,22,23,24]. The different catalysis mechanisms between ruthenium-based catalysts and copperbased catalysts are discussed, and the strong reduction ability of copper complexes is explained. Mechanisms of the photoredox catalysis by CuI and CuII are summarized, and the copper-catalyzed reactions, including alkene functionalization, alkyne functionalization, organic halides functionalization, and alkyl C–H functionalization, are highlighted. Scheme 1: Photoredox catalysis mechanism of [Ru(bpy)3]2+
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