Dedicated to Professor Alain Krief on the occasion of his 80th birthday
Abstract
Visible light photocatalysis has established itself as a promising sustainable and
powerful strategy to access reactive intermediates, i.e. radicals and radical ions,
under mild reaction conditions using visible light irradiation. This field enables
the development of formerly challenging or even previously inaccessible organic transformations.
In this tutorial review, an overview of the essential concepts and techniques of visible-light-mediated
chemical processes and the most common types of photochemical activation of organic
molecules, i.e. photoredox catalysis and photosensitization, are discussed. Selected
photocatalytic alkene functionalization reactions are included as examples to illustrate
the basic concepts and techniques with particular attention given to the understanding
of their reaction mechanisms.
1 Introduction
2 Photocatalysts
3 Photophysical and Electrochemical Properties
3.1 Excited-State Energy
3.2 Ground-State Redox Potentials
3.3 Excited-State Redox Potentials
3.4 Local Absorbance Maximum for Lowest Energy Absorption
3.5 Excited-State Lifetime
3.6 [Ru(bpy)3]2+ as a Case Study
3.7 Basic Laws and Equations of Photochemistry and Photocatalysis
3.8 Common Terminology in Photochemistry and Photocatalysis
4 Activation Modes in Photocatalysis
4.1 Photoinduced Electron Transfer
4.2 Photoinduced Energy Transfer
5 Conclusions and Outlook
Keywords
visible light - photocatalyst - excited state - redox potential - PET (photoinduced
electron transfer) - EnT (photoinduced energy transfer)