Blue light squeezes out heteroatoms from small rings
Photochemical ring editing reaction allows complete molecular shape change in a single step
A reaction that kicks out a single nitrogen, oxygen or sulfur atom from six-membered rings using only blue light has been developed by US scientists.
The method involves breaking the C–N, C–O or C–S bond in saturated heterocycles and reclosing the ring to create smaller cyclic structures. ‘This avoids having to go back to the very beginning of a synthesis to build the type of scaffold that can be accessed here,’ says Richmond Sarpong from the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study.