Synergistic photoredox and copper catalysis by diode-like coordination polymer with twisted and polar copper–dye conjugation

Synergistic photoredox and copper catalysis confers new synthetic possibilities in the pharmaceutical field, but is seriously affected by the consumptive fluorescence quenching of Cu(II). By decorating bulky auxiliaries into a photoreductive triphenylamine-based ligand to twist the conjugation between the triphenylamine-based ligand and the polar Cu(II)–carboxylate node in the coordination polymer, we report a heterogeneous approach to directly confront this inherent problem. The twisted and polar Cu(II)–dye conjunction endows the coordination polymer with diode-like photoelectronic behaviours, which hampers the inter- and intramolecular photoinduced electron transfer from the triphenylamine-moiety to the Cu(II) site and permits reversed-directional ground-state electronic conductivity, rectifying the productive loop circuit for synergising photoredox and copper catalysis in pharmaceutically valuable decarboxylative C(sp3)–heteroatom couplings. The well-retained Cu(II) sites during photoirradiation exhibit unique inner-spheric modulation effects, which endow the couplings with adaptability to different types of nucleophiles and radical precursors under concise reaction conditions, and distinguish the multi-olefinic moieties of biointeresting steride derivatives in their late-stage trifluoromethylation-chloration difunctionalisation.