Tailoring the photoredox properties of organic dyes

The increasing interest for photoredox-induced processes has recently led to the exploitation of a large variety of inorganic and organic chromophores to trigger chemical reactions through photoinduced electron transfer (PET), generating highly reactive radical species. Until now, efforts in the field have been focused on the type of organic transformations, and rarely centred on the rational design of dyes featuring excited states with tailored photoredox properties for a given reaction. It is with this aim, that in this chapter we report on the general designing principle to engineer organic dyes (both as small molecules and macromolecules) featuring tailored photoredox properties. Understanding the behaviour of chromophores depicting programmed redox potentials in photo-triggered chemical transformations is crucial if one wants to rationally trigger novel organic reactions.