Ketones represent one of the most prevalent structural motifs in various bioactive natural products and pharmaceutical agents [
27–
31]. They also serve as necessary starting materials for assembling structurally complex molecules. In particular, the 1,4-diketones, frequently used for diverse cyclization reactions, have played a crucial role in advancing heterocyclic chemistry and thus accelerating the discovery of novel agrochemicals, drug molecules, and dye materials. (
Scheme 1a) [
32–
35]. Traditional preparation methods of 1,4-diketones typically involve forming one chemical bond and connecting two functionalized keto-substrates. As illustrated in
Scheme 1b, there are two main established strategies, namely as 2,3-disconnection and 3,4-disconnection pathway, which include the classical nucleophilic substitution reaction [
36–
38], oxidative cross-coupling of metal enolates [
39–
44], and Stetter-type addition [
45–
54], respectively. In recent years, radical bis-acylation of simple olefins, based on a more efficient 1,2- and 3,4-disconnection strategy, has emerged as a powerful tool for rapidly synthesizing 1,4-diketones. For instance, in 2020, Xia reported an elegant example of using 4-benzoyl-dihydropyridines (DHP) as bis-acylating reagents to react with styrene in the presence of nickel catalysts under visible light irradiation [
55]. Soon afterward, Wu and Xiao's groups independently utilized
α-keto acids and olefins to achieve the target bis-acylation reactions by using photoredox/N(
n-Bu)
4+ catalytic system and photoredox/chromium dual catalysis, respectively [
56,
57]. Later, Feng and co-workers disclosed that acyl fluorides were also suitable substrates for the bis-acylation process upon visible light-promoted NHC catalysis [
58]. Our group has recently developed a conceptually-different oxidative radical NHC catalysis to achieve 1,4-diketone synthesis through bis-acylation of olefins by using various commercially available aldehydes as acylating substrates [
59]. Despite this, all of the above works belong to the two-component reaction manifold, which could only allow the synthesis of symmetric 1,4-diketones (
Scheme 1c, left). In parallel, the first example of an unsymmetric synthsis of 1,4-diketones was reported by Wu and co-workers, and they realized the three-component reactions of
α-keto acids, 4-benzoyl-DHP, and simple styrene under photoredox catalysis [
56]. After that, more catalytic synthesis methods were reported; for example, Larionov disclosed an elegant visible light-induced NHC-catalyzed radical coupling of aldehyde, oxime, and styrene to access a spectrum of 1,4-diketone products (
Scheme 1c, right) [
60]. Inspired by these advancements, we envisaged that the unsymmetric olefin bis-acylation process might be also achieved by merging NHC organocatalysis and photoredox catalysis [
61,
62]. As part of our continuing interests in NHC radical organocatalytic synthesis [
6,
63–
72], we herein disclose the modular synthesis of 1,4-diketones through regioselective bis-acylation of olefins by using the bench-stable
α-keto acids [
27,
73] and acyl imidazoles upon organo- and photoredox dual catalysis [
74–
76]. This protocol could offer a straightforward route to diketones featuring excellent functional group tolerance under mild conditions.