Photoinduced nickel-catalyzed carbonylation of alkyl halides to acid chlorides

Recently in Angewandte Chemie, Arndtsen and co-workers described a visible-light-mediated carbonylation of alkyl halides to their corre-sponding acid chlorides using a stable, carbon monoxide (CO) -coordi-nated Ni(0)/xantphos catalyst. The successful implementation of this CO-coordinated base-metal catalytic system illustrates how chal-lenging carbonylation reactions can be achieved without the use of precious-metal catalysis.