Chiral Phosphoric Acid Creates Promising Opportunities for Enantioselective Photoredox Catalysis

In recent years, visible light driven enantioselective chemical transformations have emerged as new additions to the toolkit of synthetic chemists to accomplish more efficient assembly of chiral molecules. Nonetheless, implementing precise stereocontrol on photoinduced intermolecular radical coupling process remains arduous. Recent studies unveil the underexplored competence of chiral phosphoric acid for this class of asymmetric photoredox reactions, endowed by its capability as a bifunctional H-bonding catalyst for synchronous interaction with radical intermediate and substrate while channeling the cross-coupling in a highly enantioselective manner. This paper highlights the recent advances, future outlook as well as the prospective challenges in this research area.