Adventures with Photoactive Metal Complexes: Sensitised Lathanide Luminescence, Photoredox Catalysis and Photoactive Supramolecular Cages

In this talk, I will give an overview of several different topics being investigated in my research group, and the common experimental techniques which link them together. Specifically, some results on the mechanistic aspects of “Sensitized Lanthanide Luminescence” in the Near Infra-Red (NIR) region using photoactive transition metal complexes based on Ru(II) will be presented. From there, I will move on to another rapidly developing area of interest, namely “Photoredox Catalysis”. This branch of photochemistry relies on the excited state properties of photoactive transition metal complexes, which are able to facilitate Single Electron Transfer (SET) reactions, generating organic radicals that can be of considerable use in synthetic organic chemistry. Using time resolved spectroscopic techniques, we have recently investigated a C-H arylation reaction, revealing an unusual mechanism for Sensitisation Initiated Electron Transfer (SenI-ET) which had been the subject of some debate in the literature. Lastly, I will report on our ongoing work aimed at developing “Photoactive Supramolecular Cages”, in an effort to combine the fields of photoredox catalysis and supramolecular chemistry. This approach offers the potential for new and/or unusual chemical reactivity to be developed, which may be controlled by the confines of the cage and would ideally offer enhanced reactivity and/or product selectivity compared to typical solution based reactions.