Selective C–O Bond Cleavage of Lignin Systems and Polymers Enabled by Sequential Palladium-Catalyzed Aerobic Oxidation and Visible-Light Photoredox Catalysis

Lignin, which is a highly cross-linked and irregular biopolymer, is nature's most abundant source of aromatic compounds and constitutes an attractive renewable resource for the production of aromatic commodity chemicals. Herein, we demonstrate a practical and operationally simple two-step degradation approach involving Pd-catalyzed aerobic oxidation and visible-light photoredox-catalyzed reductive fragmentation for the chemoselective cleavage of the β-O-4 linkage—the predominant linkage in lignin—for the generation of lower-molecular-weight aromatic building blocks. The developed strategy affords the β-O-4 bond cleaved products with high chemoselectivity and in high yields, is amenable to continuous flow processing, operates at ambient temperature and pressure, and is moisture- and oxygen-tolerant.