Photocatalysis has emerged as a promising strategy for unlocking novel reactivity from commercially accessible feedstocks. This work reports a three-component reaction of aldehydes, aliphatic secondary amines, and aliphatic carboxylic acids, enabled by a synergistic dual catalytic system merging photoredox and Lewis acid catalysis. This approach provides a modular route to access synthetically valuable α-branched tertiary amines in good yields.
Zhu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.