Teaching old transition metals new tricks: Chemists activate palladium catalysis by light
(PHYSorg.com Chemistry)

In the production of compounds, chemists have the fundamental goal of finding strategies that are most selective and avoid waste products. Breakthroughs in this area serve, among other things, to drive industrial innovation and drug development. In this context, allylic substitution reactions using catalysts made of so-called transition metals have already led to significant advances in science. In a molecule the catalysts cause a functional group to be replaced by another group in allylic position, i.e. in direct proximity to a carbon-carbon double bond.