Recent examples of sustainable acylations by photogenerated acyl/alkoxycarbonyl/carbamoyl radicals have been discussed in this article.

Recent advances in the synthesis of (hetero)aromatics starting from polyenes, such as dienynes, enediynes and enyne–allenes, are discussed.

This work systematically compares both structural features and photocatalytic performance of a series of graphitic and amorphous carbon dots (CDs) prepared in a bottom-up manner from fructose, glucose, and citric acid. We demonstrate that the carbon source and synthetic procedures diversely affect the structural and optical properties of the CDs, which in turn unpredictably influence their photo electron transfer ability. The latter was evaluated by studying the photo-reduction of methyl viologen. Overall, citric acid-CDs were found to provide the best photocatalytic performance followed by fructose- and glucose-CDs. However, while the graphitization of glucose- and citric acid-CDs favored the photo-reaction, a reverse structure–activity dependence was observed for fructose-CDs due to the formation of a large graphitic-like supramolecular assembly. This study highlights the complexity to design in advance photo-active bio-based carbon nanomaterials.

The C–H to C–C conversion in aliphatic oxygen heterocycles (dioxolanes, 1,3-dioxane, or cyclic carbonates) by photocatalytic hydrogen atom transfer and subsequent trapping of the resulting radical with phenyl vinyl sulfone was investigated. The performance of three different photocatalysts, namely tetrabutylammonium decatungstate and the aromatic ketones thioxanthone and 9-fluorenone, was compared. The UV-light-absorbing decatungstate anion is more efficient and permits the use of a smaller excess of hydrogen donor than the aromatic ketones, although the ketones could be excited by visible light. Further intramolecular selectivity studies revealed that aromatic ketones afforded a higher proportion of functionalization at the acetalic versus the ethereal positions than did the decatungstate anion.