As early as 1912, photochemistry was prophesized to provide a sustainable alternative to
fossil energy sources: "On the arid lands there will spring up industrial colonies without
smoke and without smokestacks; forests of glass tubes will extend over the plains and glass
buildings will rise everywhere; inside of these will take place the photochemical processes
that hitherto have been the guarded secret of the plants".(1) More than hundred years later,
Ciamician's dream is yet to come true, although significant progress has been made in this
area.
In this lecture, we will present the attempts of our group to develop and improve UV- and
visible light-mediated chemical reactions by the mean of photoredox catalysis(2) and flow
technology.(3) We will demonstrate how the efficiency of the well-known direct isomerization
of stilbene derivatives can be dramatically improved using flow reactors,(4) and how we
developed catalytic reaction manifolds for the general tin-free reductive alkylation of olefins in
batch and flow using a variety of reaction partners, including sodium triflinate, one of the
most convenient, yet underused, trifluoromethylating reagents.(5-8)
References:
(1) G. Ciamician, Science, 1912, 36, 385.
(2) C. K. Prier, D. A. Rankic, D. W. C. MacMillan, Chem. Rev. 2013, 113, 5322.
(3) D. Cambié, C. Bottecchia, N. J. W. Straathof, V. Hessel, T. Noël, Chem. Rev. 2016, 116,
10276.
(4) Q. Lefebvre, M. Jentsch, M. Rueping, Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2013, 9, 1883.
(5) M. Nakajima, Q. Lefebvre, M. Rueping, Chem. Commun. 2014, 50, 3619.
(6) Q. Lefebvre, N. Hoffmann, M. Rueping, Chem. Commun. 2016, 52, 2493.
(7) A. Millet, Q. Lefebvre, M. Rueping, Chem. Eur. J. 2016, 22, 13464.
(8) R. Porta, Q. Lefebvre, A. Millet, M. Rueping, manuscript submitted