Catalyst‐free Decarboxylation and Decarboxylative Giese Additions of Alkyl Carboxylates through Photoactivation of Electron Donor‐Acceptor Complex

Abstract

Abstract We report herein a catalyst‐free method to perform decarboxylative conjugated addition and hydrodecarboxylation of aliphatic N‐(acyloxy)phthalimides (redox active esters, RAEs) through photoactivation of electron‐donor‐acceptor (EDA) complex with Hantzsch ester (HE) in N,N‐dimethylacetamide (DMA) solution. The reactions present a green method to decarboxylatively construct carbon‐carbon bond and to perform hydrodecarboxylation with broad substrate scope and functional group tolerance under mild blue light irradiation condition without recourse of popularly used photoredox catalysts. magnified image