Handbook of CH-Functionalization, p. 1-32, 2022
DOI: 10.1002/9783527834242.chf0228
Abstract Transition metal‐catalyzed CH activation has become a powerful tool to create CC or CX bonds in organic molecules due to its multiple advantages such as the use of minimally prefunctionalized substrates, few steps, and potential for less waste. However, despite great progress in the area, many of these reactions still suffer from harsh conditions as they proceed at high temperatures or in the presence of toxic and expensive chemical oxidants. On the other hand, in recent years renewable energy sources have been introduced in organic chemistry offering a huge improvement in terms of sustainability. Specifically, the fields of photocatalysis and electrochemistry have experimented a real renaissance in the last decades, capable of developing eco‐friendly methodologies to prepare complex molecules from simple precursors. Thus, the combination of these technologies with metal‐catalyzed CH activation can represent an ideal solution in line with the principles of green chemistry, achieving challenging transformations under environmentally friendly conditions. Herein, the most important advances in this topic are described, highlighting representative examples of metallaelectro‐catalyzed and metallaphoto‐catalyzed CH activation reactions.