Visible-Light-Promoted Asymmetric Cross-Dehydrogenative Coupling of Tertiary Amines to Ketones by Synergistic Multiple Catalysis.

Reported herein is an unprecedented photocatalytic asymmetric cross-dehydrogenative coupling reaction between tertiary amines and simple ketones, and it proceeds by synergistic multiple catalysis with substoichiometric amounts of a hydrogen acceptor. This process is enabled by a simple chiral primary amine catalyst through the coupling of a catalytic enamine intermediate and an iminium cation intermediate in situ generated from tetrahydroisoquinoline derivatives by coupled Ru/Co catalysis.