Yun-Lai Ren

Easy construction of DMAP-incorporated covalent triazine frameworks as robust and green catalysts for the highly efficient synthesis of thiazolidinethione and esterification reactions.

The utilization of photocatalysis for the reduction of highly toxic Cr(VI) to less toxic Cr(III) presents a cost-effective and sustainable green approach. It is crucial to design and produce efficient, stable, and recyclable photocatalysts for the photoreduction of Cr(VI). In this study, thiophene units were successfully incorporated into organic molecular sieves via a Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reaction, resulting in two thiophene-based OMSs (TP-OMS1 and TP-OMS2). The experiments showed that both TP-OMSs could efficiently convert Cr(VI) to Cr(III) under visible light without sacrificial agents or pH adjustment. Compared with TP-OMS2, TP-OMS1 exhibited higher reduction efficiency (TP-OMS1 > 99%, TP-OMS2 > 94% after 2 h). Even at a concentration of 100 mg L⁻¹ of Cr(VI), 5 mg of TP-OMS1 can still effectively catalyze the photoreduction within 4 h. TP-OMS1 exhibits exceptional stability and recyclability, and can be reused for at least 8 runs without significant loss in activity or structural integrity. Therefore, incorporating thiophene into TP-OMSs can enhance their photocatalytic performance for the Cr(VI) reduction, facilitating the removal of toxic pollutants. The mechanism of porous catalysis has also been thoroughly investigated here.

Utilization of clean and low‐cost water as the reductant to enable hydrogenation of alkenes is highly attractive in green chemistry. However, this research subject is considerably challenging due to the sluggish kinetics of the water oxidation half‐reaction. It is also very difficult to avoid the undesired oxidation of alkenes because that this oxidation is far easier to occur than the desired oxidation of water from thermodynamic standpoint. Herein, this challenge is overcome by applying a cooperative catalysis where HCl is used as the cocatalyst to accelerate Pt/g‐C₃N₄‐catalyzed water oxidation and suppress the undesired oxidation of the alkene. This provides an example for using water as the reductant and the proton source to enable the photocatalytic hydrogenation of alkenes. The present method exhibits broad substrate applicability, and allows various arylethenes and aliphatic alkenes to undergo the hydrogenation smoothly.

Concisely constructing s -tetrazine-embedded organic molecular sieve photocatalysts for the gram-scale synthesis of benzimidazoles in batch and flow.

Ultrathin BiOX/rGO (X = F, Cl, Br, and I) nanosheets serve as novel sulfur hosts in Li–S batteries. The influence of X on the electrochemical performance and redox mechanism is elucidated through in situ Raman/XRD characterization and DFT analysis.

It was found that lignin β ‐O‐4 ketone models could undergo smoothly the hydrogenolysis via light‐induced water‐donating transfer hydrogenation, which provides an example of using inexpensive and eco‐friendly water as the H‐transfer reagent to enable hydrogenolysis of lignin β ‐O‐4 ketone models under catalyst‐free condition. Preliminary mechanistic investigations suggest that the mechanistic pathway involves the formation of acetophenone radicals.

It is fascinating to use water as a hydrogen source to enable the hydrogenation of organic molecules in green chemistry. Nevertheless, current light-driven strategies suffer from an expense of reductants for proton reduction due to a high difficulty in overall water splitting. Herein, we have overcome this challenge and report that light-induced overall water splitting is coupled with hydrogenation of aryl bromides by cooperative catalysis between recyclable Pd/g-C₃N₄ and Fe species, which opens up a photocatalytic avenue to use water as both an electron donor and a hydrogen source to enable hydrogenation of aryl bromides, avoiding the use of additional reductants. Moreover, mild conditions, recyclable catalyst systems and the use of visible-light as the energy source make this process greener. The present method also allowed various high value-added deuterated arenes to be effectively synthesized. This work will guide chemists to use water as both an electron donor and a hydrogen source to develop green procedures for the hydrogenation of various organic compounds.

The utilization of readily available and non-toxic water by photocatalytic water splitting is highly attractive in green chemistry. Herein we report that light-induced oxidative half-reaction of water splitting is effectively coupled with reduction of organic compounds, which provides a light-induced avenue to use water as an electron donor to enable reductive transformations of organic substances. The present strategy allows various aryl bromides to undergo smoothly the reductive coupling with Pd/g-C₃N₄* as the photocatalyst, giving a pollutive reductant-free method for synthesizing biaryl skeletons. Moreover, the use of green visible-light energy endows this process with more advantages including mild conditions and good functional group tolerance. Although this method has some disadvantages such as a use of environmentally unfriendly 1,2-dioxane, an addition of Na₂CO₃ and so on, it can guide chemists to use water as a reducing agent to develop clean procedures for various organic reactions.

Correction for ‘s-Tetrazine-functionalized hyper-crosslinked polymers for efficient photocatalytic synthesis of benzimidazoles’ by Wan-Kai An et al., Green Chem., 2021, 23, 1292–1299, https://doi.org/10.1039/d0gc03719b.