Photochemistry of 1,2-diphenyl-2,2-dimethyl-propanone-1 in micellar solutions. Cage effects,isotope effects and magnetic field effects.

The cage reaction resulting from photolysis of PhCOC (CH₃)₂Ph and PhCOC(CD₃)₂Ph in micellar solution is shown to be subject to substantial magnetic field and magnetic isotope effects.     

Adiabatic Photoreactions of Organic Molecules

An adiabatic photoreaction is a chemical process that occurs entirely on a single excited electronic energy surface. As a rule, most photoreactions of organic molecules start on an excited electronic surface but “jump” to a lower surface somewhere along the reaction coordinate. There are, however, exceptions to this general rule. For example, photoreactions involving small structural changes and minor alterations in covalent bonding (e.g., proton transfer and complex formation) are commonly found to occur adiabatically. The purpose of this review is to survey examples of more complicated adiabatic photoreactions such as fragmentation, electrocyclic rearrangements, and geometrical isomerizations. The concepts employed are presented in an introductory discussion.     

Reactivity of singlet oxygen toward strained substrates and a novel non-photochemical method for determination of quenching constants of singlet oxygen.

Rate constants for quenching of ¹O₂ by a number of strained molecules have been determined by the competitive rubrene photooxidation method; the rate constant for quenching by Q may be evaluated by adaption of a kinetic analysis already in the literature for the rubrene photooxidation method.     

Controlled diastereoselectivity at the alkene-geometry through selective encapsulation: E-Z photoisomerization of oxazolidinone-functionalized enecarbamates within hydrophobic nano-cavities

Photoisomerization of encapsulated Z-enecarbamates within the hydrophobic chiral cavities of gamma-CD showed higher diastereoselectivities in the photoproducts than those obtained in solution. The selective encapsulation of the enecarbamates and the following isomerization process are both diastereoselectively controlled by gamma-CD.     

Stereochemistry of photoinitiated emulsion polymerization

The tacticity of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) samples made by emulsion polymerization (EP) has been determined by NMR spectroscopy at higher resolution than any previous study. When photoinitiation is employed at room temperature, the polymer obtained is highly syndiotactic and more stereoregular than that obtained in homogeneous radical polymerization under the same conditions. The percentage of racemic dyads and the length of racemic sequences vary significantly with the degree of conversion and the temperature, but not with variation of the hydrophobic or the hydrophilic part of the detergent molecules. A magnetic field of 5 kG or less accelerates the polymerization reaction and increases the polymer molecular weight when dibenzyl ketone is employed as oil-soluble photoinitiator, and has an indirect influence on the polymer tacticity. From measurements of the temperature dependence of the polymer steric composition, the difference of activation enthalphy and entropy of the meso and racemic additions have been calculated. The values do not follow the correlations from precedent literature for radical polymerization in solution if the reaction is considered a first-order Markov process. The persistence ratio p depends on the detergent and the temperature of the EP; in some cases its difference from unity exceeds the experimental error. These results are interpreted as a conformational effect of the locus of the polymerization in the first stage of the EP (when micelles are present) that favors the racemic addition more than is expected in a homologous solvent such as an alkane, e.g., at the same temperature.