Metal-free and visible-light-mediated method enables the synthesis of olefins from ketones

Abstract

Direct synthesis of olefins continues to attract stellar attention due to the high importance of olefins. In this context, due to the wide availability of ketones, the synthesis of olefins directly from ketones provides a straightforward route. Considering this, olefins synthesis from ketones via the formation of donor/donor type carbenes has been developed which leads to the efficient synthesis of versatile olefins by using a metal-free strategy. This approach features mild reaction conditions and exhibits a broad substrate scope when a biomass-derived solvent as a green reaction media is used. The practical utility of this approach has been demonstrated via late-stage modifications and even by scaling up to 20 ​g scale. At the end, mechanistic investigations and density functional theory studies clearly proved the formation of donor/donor carbenes, and examined the necessity of all the reagents and the effect of light in this system.