Nature Communications (Jul 2025)

General method for carbon–heteroatom cross-coupling reactions via semiheterogeneous red-light metallaphotocatalysis

  • Geyang Song,
  • Wei Zhang,
  • Jiameng Song,
  • Qi Li,
  • Yuyu Feng,
  • Hongyu Liang,
  • Tengfei Kang,
  • Jianyang Dong,
  • Gang Li,
  • Juan Fan,
  • Xue-Peng Zhang,
  • Quan Gu,
  • Chao Wang,
  • Dong Xue

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61812-z
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 1
pp. 1 – 15

Abstract

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Abstract Combining transition-metal catalysis with photocatalysis has emerged as a valuable, complementary approach for achieving carbon–heteroatom cross-coupling reactions. However, the need to use blue or high-energy near-UV light leads to problems with scalability, chemoselectivity, and catalyst deactivation, which have limited the synthetic applications of this combination. Herein, we report a method for red-light-driven nickel-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions of aryl halides with 11 different types of nucleophiles using a polymeric carbon nitride (CN-OA-m) as a photocatalyst. This semiheterogeneous catalyst system enabled the formation of four different types of carbon–heteroatom bonds (C–N, C–O, C–S, and C–Se) with a wide range of substrates (more than 200 examples) with yields up to 94%. Moreover, the photocatalyst is easily recovered and recycled, which makes it a promising new tool for the development of other reactions involving red-light metallaphotoredox catalysis.