Dorel Ruth, Feringa Ben L
Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands.
Chem Commun (Camb). 2019 Jun 4;55(46):6477-6486. doi: 10.1039/c9cc01891c.
Photoswitchable catalysis is a young but rapidly evolving field that offers great potential for non-invasive dynamic control of both activity and selectivity in catalysis. Within this context, the E/Z photoisomerisation of double bonds in molecular switches and motors is one of the most popular tools to control the catalytic activity essentially due to its reversible nature, the large concomitant geometrical changes, and the high tunability of such photochromic entities. This Feature Article summarises the key developments accomplished over the past years through the incorporation of photoswitchable double bonds into the structure of catalytically competent molecules and shows some perspectives on the remaining challenges and possibilities arising from this, yet still somehow immature, exciting area of research.
光开关催化是一个年轻但发展迅速的领域，它为催化活性和选择性的非侵入式动态控制提供了巨大潜力。在此背景下，分子开关和分子马达中双键的E/Z光异构化是控制催化活性最常用的工具之一，这主要归因于其可逆性、伴随的巨大几何变化以及此类光致变色实体的高度可调性。这篇专题文章总结了过去几年通过将光开关双键引入具有催化活性的分子结构中所取得的关键进展，并展示了关于这个仍有些不成熟但令人兴奋的研究领域所面临的剩余挑战和可能性的一些观点。
