Screening Commercial Semiconductors for Visible Light Driven Asymmetric Catalysis

To find cheap and commercially available materials that are efficient in the catalytic process is of paramount importance for practical application in both chemical and biomedical engineering. As-purchased nanosized semiconductors are systematically investigated as catalysts in visible light driven asymmetric reactions with the help of chiral ligands. Significantly, among varied semiconductors, WO 3 exhibits the best performance with 91% enantiomeric excess and 95% conversion ratio.