Abstract
A general strategy to access both aryl and alkyl
radicals by photosensitized decarboxylation of the corresponding carboxylic
acids esters has been developed. An energy transfer mediated homolysis of
unsymmetrical sigma-bonds for a concerted
fragmentation/decarboxylation process is involved. As a result, an independent
aryl/alkyl radical generation step enables a series of key C-X and C-C bond forming reactions by
simply changing the radical trapping agent.