Perylenediimide-Based Hybrid Materials for the Iodoperfluoroalkylation of Alkenes and Oxidative Coupling of Amines: Bay-Substituent-Mediated Photocatalytic Activity

Inorganic–organic donor–acceptor hybrid compounds are an emerging class of multifunctional crystalline materials with well-defined structures built from semiconductive inorganic and organic components. Perylenediimides (PDIs) are a prominent class of electron-deficient organic dyes, which can undergo consecutive photoinduced electron transfers to generate doublet excited-state radical anions for photoredox-inert chemical bonds. Thus, this is an excellent organic component for building hybrid materials to study the structure–property relationships in organic synthesis. In this context, three molecular structure modified PDI-based hybrid materials, (Me4-PDI)2·SiW12O40 (1), (Me4-Cl4-PDI)2·SiW12O40 (2), and (Me4-Br2-PDI)1.5·HSiW12O40 (3), were studied. By the introduction of different substituent groups at the bay positions, these three hybrid materials were successfully fabricated to investigate the impact of substituent groups on the photocatalytic activity. As expected, all PDI-based hybrid materials easily underwent consecutive photoexcitation to obtain their excited-state radical anions. However, experimental and theoretical analyses showed that these obtained excited-state radical anions displayed unusual bay-substituent-group-dependent photocatalytic conversion activities for the iodoperfluoroalkylation of alkenes and oxidative coupling of amines. Higher conversion yields were obtained for complexes 1 and 3 (bay-unsubstituted and Br-substituted PDI hybrid materials, respectively), and lower conversion was observed for complex 2 (Cl-substituted PDI hybrid material), which is attributed to the excited-state SOMO-1 energies of the PDI radical anions. The structure–property relationship established in this work provides insights for the further exploration of bay-substituted PDI hybrid materials in other small-molecule photocatalytic transformations.