The use of visible light for organic synthesis is a very old idea: More than 100 years ago the Italian chemist Giacomo Ciamician discovered and promoted the field. Recently, photoredox chemistry mediated by metal complexes, such as ruthenium-trisbipyridine, or organic dyes, such as eosin or perylenediimides, gained enormous interest for applications in organic synthesis.

We present some of the recent results using photoredox catalysis with visible light from our laboratory including photooxidations, oxidative C-C bond formation and arylation reactions utilizing one or two photons for activation.