Recent Advance in Single Nickel Photocatalysis for Carbon‐Heteroatom Bond Formation

Abstract The widely used nickel catalysis for carbon‐heteroatom cross‐coupling reactions often requires high energy to achieve reductive elimination on Ni II complexes. To overcome the energy barrier of reductive elimination, the Ni II complexes often transform to Ni III facile reductive elimination via single electron transfer in photochemistry. Energy transfer to form the excited‐state Ni II complexes is feasible as well for carbon‐heteroatom couplings in nickel catalysis. This Review is focused on the discussion about the variant nickel(II) complexes as the precatalysts to forge diverse carbon‐heteroatom bonds under visible‐light irradiation in the absence of exogenous photocatalysts. Summary of photoactive nickel catalysis aims to promote the development of cheap, abundant metals catalyzed carbon‐heteroatom couplings for efficient preparation of highly valuable chemicals.