Recent Advances in Visible Light‐induced Asymmetric Transformations of Carbonyl Compounds into Chiral Alcohols

Abstract Visible light‐induced photocatalysis has been widely investigated, which offers exciting opportunities to build new catalytic platforms that are unattainable under ground state conditions. Asymmetric photocatalysis has been a longstanding challenge due to the high reactivity of photogenerated intermediates leading to strong background reaction. Carbonyl group is an important fundamental scaffold in organic synthesis. The photocatalytic asymmetric transformations of carbonyl compounds for synthesizing enantioenriched secondary and tertiary alcohols are of significant value but remain problematic. Even so, a series of intriguing works concerning this topic have been reported in recent year. This review summarizes the advances in this area, mainly dividing into single and synergetic catalyst systems, and the mechanism of each reaction is discussed.