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

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.