A Retrosynthetic Approach for Photocatalysis

Visible-light-mediated chemical reactions have become very popular within the last 15 years. Many excellent reviews have summarized reaction principles and recent results in photochemistry and photocatalysis. However, despite their popularity photochemistry and photoredox catalysis are not regular parts of the bachelor and master curriculum of chemistry education. As a consequence, most chemists will use in synthesis planning classic retrosynthetic disconnections and only rarely consider photocatalytic steps. The aim of this article is to be a useful tool for synthetic chemists, that are interested in the synthetic aspects of photocatalysis and looking for a specific retrosynthetic disconnection. Not only are informative schemes provided but also are the availability of the catalysts and reagents as well as the functional group tolerance of the respective method briefly discussed.