One-Pot Dual Catalysis of a Photoactive Coordination Polymer and Palladium Acetate for the Highly Efficient Cross-Coupling Reaction via Interfacial Electron Transfer

We report herein an exploration of the straightforward one-pot dual-catalysis strategy, i.e., direct combination of a photoactive coordination polymer (CP) with another metal catalyst, for carrying out the desirable photoinduced organic transformation. The strategy overcomes the necessity of the presynthesis of the metal/CP composite that has been demonstrated to be invalid in our case. A new two-dimensional CP showing the desirable properties of wide-range visible-light absorption and efficient photoinduced charge generation was synthesized via a solvothermal reaction. The synthesized CP was successfully applied to the photocatalytic C–C cross-coupling reaction via the one-pot dual-catalysis method, in combination with the simple and ligand-free palladium salt of Pd­(OAc)2 as a metal catalyst. The reaction features a short reaction time, mild reaction conditions, good recyclability, and a high yield of Heck products from a broad variety of substrates. A comparative experiment showed the presynthesized Pd/CP composite was invalid for the reaction, demonstrating the significance of the one-pot dual-catalysis strategy. Mechanistic studies suggest the one-pot reaction depends on the synergy between the photocatalysis of a synthesized CP to generate reactive aryl radicals and Pd catalysis to generate target products, in which the interfacial electron transfer has been demonstrated to be vital for producing the transient and catalytically active Pd(0) species near the surface of the CP. The study shows the direct combination of a CP photocatalyst and a metal catalyst is a highly feasible method for the photochemical reaction and enhances the prospects of application of photoactive CPs.