New and Efficient Approaches to Functionalization via Metal-Catalyzed and Photo-Induced Transformations

Functionalization has emerged as an attractive strategy for the diversification of compounds especially in drug development and materials science. The recent emerging trend in chemical functionalization is not only to access challenging and valuable compounds using abundant and inexpensive materials but also to consider environmental aspects of new methodologies. New methodologies in the fields of photocatalysis, transition metal catalysis, radical chemistry, and redox chemistry have found applications in functionalization. Herein, new and efficient approaches to functionalization of common aryl halides, abundant carboxylic acids, and readily available alkenes via metal-catalyzed or photoinduced transformations will be discussed. Specifically, the focus will be on the following transformations: conversion of aryl halides to borylated compounds and corresponding sulfones, as well as conversion of carboxylic acids to amines, alkenes, and other important compounds. Alkenes take part in discrete carboborative ring contractions or challenging dienes syntheses. In some cases, discussion of the mechanistic investigations and density functional theory calculations will be included to provide insights into the reaction details. Some ongoing works with preliminary results in decarboxylation and dienylation will be briefly discussed.