Exogenous photocatalyst-free aryl radical generation from diaryliodonium salts and use in metal-catalyzed C-H arylation.

We demonstrate (1) detectable halogen bonding is not critical for enabling light-driven radical generation from diaryliodonium salts and (2) radicals generated by this route can be captured by transition-metals for C-H arylation reactions. These results are the first step toward developing new metal-catalyzed aryl radical couplings without exogenous photocatalysts.