Sunlight is a clean, renewable, and inexpensive source of chemical potential.  Nevertheless, most conventional methods for the photochemical synthesis of organic compounds requires the use of specialized photochemical equipment that is capable of generating high energy ultraviolet light and containing it safely. This is a practical impediment that has prevented the wide adoption of photochemical synthesis in the fine chemicals industry.  We have developed a strategy that exploits the reactivity of transition metal photocatalysts in order to perform a variety of synthetically useful cycloaddition reactions using visible wavelengths of light.  By enabling the use of direct sunlight rather than high energy artificial UV light, we hope to establish a new, environmentally responsible approach to the use of photochemistry in synthetic organic chemistry.

Organic synthesis using visible light photocatalysis

241st National Meeting (2011)

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