Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.130, No.39, 12886-12886, 2008
Efficient visible light photocatalysis of [2+2] enone cycloadditions
We report that Ru(bipy)(3)Cl-2 can serve as a visible light photocatalyst for [2+2] enone cycloadditions. A variety of aryl enones participate readily in the reaction, and the diastereoselectivity in the formation of the cyclobutane products is excellent. We propose a mechanism in which a photogenerated Ru(bipy)(3)(+) complex promotes one-electron reduction of the enone substrate, which undergoes subsequent radical anion cycloaddition. The efficiency of this process is extremely high, which allows rapid, high-yielding [2+2] cyclizations to be conducted using incident sunlight as the only source of irradiation.