A mechanistically distinctive visible-light-promoted metal-free aerobic oxidation of alkenyl silanes with alcohols was disclosed to efficiently construct α-alkoxy ketones under mild conditions. The primary, secondary, and tertiary alcohols could be used as reactants. The protocol could be carried out on a gram-scale. The various derivatizations of products could be conducted. Mechanistic studies indicated the reaction was initiated by single-electron oxidation of the alkenyl silanes.

α-Olefins as aliphatic terminal alkenes could be obtained easily from numerous contemporary synthetic reactions as well as petrochemical industry, and also found in natural products. Compared to the alkenes attaching the directing groups or activating group, the catalytic asymmetric reaction of unactivated terminal alkenes presents great challenges due to the weak electron effect and small steric hindrance effect. This review mainly summerizes the latest progress of the asymmetric reaction of unactivated terminal olefins since 2016.

Here, we report a cobalt-catalyzed sequential dehydrogenative Heck silylation/hydroamination of styrenes with hydrosilane and diazo compound to access 1-amino-2-silyl compounds with excellent regioselectivity. This difunctionalization reaction could undergo smoothly using 1 mol% catalyst loading with good functional group tolerance. Not only di- and tri-substituted hydrosilanes, but also alkoxysilane are suitable, which does explore the scope of the family of 1-amino-2-silyl compounds. The ligand relay phenomenon between neutral tridentate NNN ligand and anionic NNN ligand is observed for the first time via absorption spectra analysis in this one-pot, two-step transformations. The primary mechanism has been proposed based on the control experiments.