Chen Liu,‡ Han-Nan Chen,‡ Teng-Fei Xiao, Xiu-Qin Hu,* Peng-Fei Xu and Guo-Qiang Xu *
A mild metal-free C–N bond activation strategy for the direct conversion of inert tertiary amines with acyl chlorides into tertiary amides via organic photoredox catalysis is presented. In this protocol, a novel organic photocatalyst (Cz-NI-Ph) that showed excellent catalytic performance during C–N bond cleavage is developed. Moreover, this reaction features green and mild conditions, broad substrate scope, and readily available raw materials.