Diphenyl Diselenide-Assisted Radical Addition Reaction of Diphenyl Disulfide to Unsaturated Bonds upon Photoirradiation

The addition reaction of interelement compounds with heteroatom–heteroatom single bonds to unsaturated bonds under photoirradiation is an important method for the efficient and atom-economical construction of carbon–heteroatom bonds. However, in practice, the desired addition reaction is sometimes unable to proceed as expected due to the low efficiency of the desired addition reactions or the preferential polymerization of unsaturated compounds. In this study, by combining an interelement compound with homologous heteroatom compounds as a catalyst, we succeeded in suppressing the polymerization of the unsaturated compounds and in attaining a highly selective carbon–heteroatom bond formation through the desired addition reaction. In this paper, we have examined in detail whether such a “catalytic radical reaction” proceeds for unsaturated compounds and found that the dithiolation of some unsaturated compounds (i.e., vinylic ethers, styrenes, and isocyanides) could proceed with the assistance of (PhSe)₂ under light. The developed methods in this study are expected to have strong implications in the fields of radical chemistry, heteroatom chemistry, synthetic organic chemistry, and catalyst chemistry as atom-economical methods for carbon–heteroatom bond formation.