Visible light-promoted transformations of carboxylic acids using organic photocatalysts

Abstract

In this doctoral thesis, we have studied the oxidation of carboxylic acids to obtain the corresponding acyloxy radicals, using visible light and non-toxic and inexpensive organic dyes, as photocatalysts. On the one hand, we study the photooxidation of aromatic carboxylic acids to obtain acyloxy radicals, whose decarboxylation is relatively slow (Chapter I and Chapter II). On the other hand, we describe the photooxidation of aliphatic carboxylic acids, to take advantage of the rapid decarboxylation of the corresponding acyloxy radicals, to generate nucleophilic radicals that were trapped by different reagents (Chapter III to Chapter V). It should be noted that all the protocols are free of expensive and toxic noble metals, the reactions were promoted with visible light at room temperature and the scalability of some reactions was demonstrated in batch conditions or using flow chemistry. In addition, mechanistic studies were carried out to propose plausible photocatalytic routes to all the reactions studied.