Photocatalytic decarboxylative alkylations mediated by triphenylphosphine and sodium iodide

Crowdsourcing a chromophore Photoredox catalysis is widely used to accelerate chemical reactions by channeling the energy in visible light. However, most implementations rely on expensive chromophores to absorb light. Fu et al. now show that a pair of cheap components acting in concert can induce these reactions, despite not being strong visible absorbers individually. The combination of sodium iodide and triphenylphosphine allowed photoinduced electron transfer to catalyze a variety of alkylations. Science , this issue p. 1429