Carbon radicals cation pool reduction

The use of cation pools as precursors of carbon radicals solves the problem, because carbocations are more easily oxidized than carbon radicals in many cases. In fact, it is well known that one-electron reduction of a carbocation leads to the formation of the corresponding carbon radical. Therefore, the reduction of cation pools should lead to the formation of carbon radicals (Scheme 5.26). 

Next, we examined the reduction of cation pools in the presence of radical acceptors. The radical that is formed by one-electron reduction of the cation is expected to add to a carbon-carbon double bond. The electrochemical reduction of 2 in the presence of methyl acrylate gave the expected addition product 16 (Scheme 9). A mechanism involving addition of radical 14 to the acrylate to generate radical 17 followed by subsequent reduction of anion 18, which is protonated to give 16 has been suggested. 

Carbon radicals can be generated by the reduction of cation pools and this method might serve as an effective method for the generation of... 

The radical mediated carbon-carbon bond formation can be performed based on the reduction of a cation pool (Scheme 3) [7]. 

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