Designing radical chemistry by visible light-promoted homolysis

The use of visible light to promote synthetic processes has been emerging rapidly in recent years. In the frame of eco-sustainable strategies involving the generation of reactive intermediates (especially radicals), the search for compounds able to directly undergo the photocleavage of a labile X–Y bond by using visible photons appears an intriguing alternative to the use of a colored photocatalyst. This review focuses on the recent efforts to design compounds having such X–Y moieties to be used in radical chemistry under photocatalyst-free conditions.