Sustainable synthesis enabled by transient photoinitiators

Most of the artificial molecules that are key components of our electronic devices, materials and medicines are polar compounds whose synthesis is still problematic today.

This often results in environmentally unsustainable and economically costly processes involving protecting groups and other un-strategic transformations.

This project aims to address this need through fundamental advances in radical coupling based on photo-stimulated single-electron transfer.

We have recently discovered that pro-aromatic weakly associated molecules can be photo-excited with safe blue LEDs to yield exceedingly fast reactions that operate in unprotected polar molecules, in water at low concentration and under air.

In this proposal we detail our plans to expand this concept into a new set of unrelated reactions based on a thorough fundamental study.

When successful, simple transformations in important polar molecules could be triggered with external light stimulation whenever required.

Thus the results of this project will have implications in the adjacent fields mentioned above due to the unrivalled  reactivity of radicals in polar environments.