Trifluoromethylation is of significant importance for the synthesis of many small molecules vital for medicinal and agrochemical research. The importance of the CF3 group as well as the related synthetic challenges is so evident that many reagents have been reported for the synthesis of trifluoromethylated compounds, but these typical reagents are expensive and the methods for preparing them are difficult. Here, we report a new scalable and operationally simple trifluoromethylation reaction using sodium trifluoroacetate as a reagent and Au-modified ZnO as a photocatalyst under visible light irradiation. The reaction proceeds via trifluoromethylation of a broad range of aryl halides, arylboronic acids, and arene and heteroarene substrates. Some pharmaceutical and agrochemical compounds have been trifluoromethylated directly to demonstrate the applicability of the method.

In this paper, we report a highly efficient photocatalytic activity of nano Pd/ZnO in cross-coupling reactions including Suzuki-Miyaura, Hiyama and Buch-wald-Hartwig reactions under visible light irradiation at ambient temperatures. This study shows that nano Pd/ZnO is a good photocatalyst under visible light irradiation. The photocatalytic activity of nano Pd/ZnO depends on the irradiation light intensity and wavelength. The results of photocatalysis demonstrate that nano Pd/ZnO, shows good result with high efficiency and selectivity and it can be recycled and reused several times without any significant loss in catalytic reactivity.[a] Prof.

Photoredox catalysis in recent years has manifested a powerful branch of science in organic synthesis. Although merging photoredox and metal catalysts has been a widely used method, switchable heterogeneous photoredox catalysis has rarely been considered. Herein, we open a new window to use a switchable heterogeneous photoredox catalyst which could be turned on/off by changing a simple stimulus (O2) for two opponent reactions, namely, oxidative and protodecarboxylation. Using this strategy, we demonstrate that Au@ZnO core–shell nanoparticles could be used as a switchable photocatalyst which has good catalytic activity to absorb visible light due to the localized surface plasmon resonance effect of gold, can decarboxylate a wide range of aromatic and aliphatic carboxylic acids, have multiple reusability, and are a reasonable candidate for synthesizing both aldehydes/ketones and alkane/arenes in a large-scale set up. Some biologically active molecules are also shown via examples of the direct oxidative and protodecarboxylation which widely provided pharmaceutical agents.

The effect of the applied compounds on insulin fibrillation at two pHs. By and large, the compounds through changing the oligomerization states and altering structure integrity of insulin can govern the fibrillation process.

Direct alkyl sp3 C–H activation to form new C–C bonds is one of the major challenges in synthetic chemistry. Herein, for the first time, we represent a new method, using nano Pd/ZnO which plays both as photoredox and transition‐metal catalyst, for C–C bond formations. By using this catalyst, we have accomplished an oxidative coupling reaction between aryl halides and tertiary amines to yield the corresponding naturally occurring alkyl aryl ketones by using visible light irradiation. Furthermore, the carbonylation process was carried out on a 10 gram scale, with visible light and thermal condition, and it was proved to be scalable, efficient, and economical.