Visible-Light Induction/Brønsted Acid Catalysis in Relay for the Enantioselective Synthesis of Tetrahydroquinolines.

An efficient method merging Brønsted acid catalysis with visible-light induction for the highly enantioselective synthesis of tetrahydroquinolines has been developed. This mild process directly transforms 2-aminoenones into 2-substituted tetrahydroquinolines with excellent enantioselectivities through a relay visible-light-induced cyclization/chiral phosphoric acid-catalyzed transfer hydrogenation reaction.