From sulfonium salts to samarium catalysis: new radical chemistry for synthesis

David J. Procter

Department of Chemistry, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK david.j.procter@manchester.ac.uk @GroupProcter

Part I – Our approach to the development of transition metal-free cross-coupling processes is based on the proposal that sulfur can replace metals in activating substrates and generating reactive intermediates for exploitation in C–C bond-formation. In particular, we will describe the exploitation of in situ generated aryl sulfonium salts in photocatalytic¹ and photochemical2 coupling processes involving aryl radicals.

Part II – Samarium(II) iodide is one of the most widely-used single electron transfer (SET) reductants in chemistry. We will showcase the reagent’s ability to unlock key steps in natural product synthesis3 and will describe our recent studies on catalysis with SmI2.^4,5,6