Light-Activated Approaches to Highly Challenging Organic Electron Transfer Reactions

还原和氧化是化学和生物学的核心，与物质中电子的添加或去除有关。到目前为止，许多重要但困难的还原只有通过非常强大的金属还原剂才能完成，比如钠，但我们最近发现了简单的中性有机化合物，完全由大量元素碳、氢和氮组成，它们可以作为强大的还原剂。2012年，我们发现这些物质在紫外光照射下变得更加强大的还原剂，甚至能够向不含显著吸电子基团的苯环提供电子。我们现在建议开发这种方法来确定化学的范围，使用可见光而不是紫外光来触发反应，并将我们的转化转化为催化使用我们的电子给体的协议。我们相信，目前由溶解在液氨中的钠进行的主要反应可以由我们的试剂在有机溶剂中进行，并用光照射。这不仅将通过使用催化过程增加经济效益，还将通过避免使用和运输都危险的活性物种(如钠)来方便和增强安全性。

Reduction and oxidation are central to chemistry and biology and relate to the addition of electrons or the removal of electrons from substances. Until now, many important but difficult reductions have only been accomplished with very powerful metal reducing agents, like sodium, but we have recently discovered simple neutral organic compounds, composed exclusively of the plentiful elements carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, that act as powerful reducing agents. In 2012, we found that these substances become even more powerful reducing agents when irradiated with ultra-violet light and are even able to donate electrons to benzene rings that contain no significant electron-withdrawing groups. We now propose to develop this approach to determine the scope of the chemistry, using visible light to trigger the reactions, rather than untraviolet light, and converting our transformations it into protocols that use our electron donors catalytically.We believe that the principal reactions that are currently undertaken by sodium dissolved in liquid ammonia can be undertaken by our reagents in organic solvent and irradiated with light. This will not only add economic benefit through use of catalytic processes, but also convenience and enhancements in safety through avoiding reactive species like sodium that are hazardous both to use and to transport.