Platinum in Chemistry: An Adventure from Phosphorescent Materials to Catalytic C−H Functionalization

: Platinum is a precious and versatile metal and has played important roles in various fields of chemistry ranging from functional materials to anticancer drugs and catalysis. This account highlights an adventurous journey of platinum from promoting phosphorescence to catalyzing a C-H functionalization reaction, or you may consider it our research adventure from phosphorescent materials to catalysis. Interestingly, this journey is driven by a series of "bad" reactions, and of course more importantly by our curiosity about the "bad" reactions. This review will introduce to you a few classes of phosphorescent materials based on tridentate and tetradentate cycloplatinated complexes and related material design strategies, a classical example of thermodynamic and kinetic control of reactions and related platinum-mediated competing sp2 /sp3 C-H activation reactions, an unprecedented regiospecific acylation of cycloplatinated complexes, and a unique platinum-catalyzed oxidant- and additive-free C-H acylation reaction.