Visible Light-Mediated Cyclopropanation: Recent Progress

Cyclopropanes are one of the most important strained rings existing in various pharmaceutical products and secondary metabolites. They are also widely used in total synthesis of natural products, medicinal chemistry, and materials science. In the past years, photochemical cyclopropanation has been gradually developed as a robust and attractive synthetic method to prepare diverse cyclopropane backbones. In this review, we summarize recent advances in the visible light-mediated cyclopropane synthesis, especially in photochemical cyclopropanation using carbene transfer strategy and photocatalytic radical cyclopropanation reactions.