1,2-dioxetane derivatives

Chemiluminescence is defined as the production of light by chemical reactions. This light is cold , which means that it is not caused by vibrations of atoms and/or molecules involved in the reaction but by direct transformation of chemical into electronic energy. For earlier discussions of this problem, see 7 9h Recent approaches towards a general theory of chemiluminescence are based on the relatively simple electron-transfer reactions occurring in aromatic radical-ion chemiluminescence reactions 10> and on considerations of molecular orbital symmetry as applied to 1.2-dioxetane derivatives, which very probably play a key role in a large number of organic chemiluminescence reactions 11>. 

The recently discovered preparative methods for the synthesis of 1.2-dioxetane derivatives (see Section V.) have made these compounds and their chemiluminescent decomposition the subject of especially intensive study. 

As mentioned in Section II. C., the concerted bond cleavage of 1.2-dioxetane derivatives has been proposed to be of general importance in respect of the excitation step of a large number of chemiluminescence reactions. The first experimental results concerning simple dioxetanes were obtained by M. M. Rauhut and coworkers in their work on activated oxalic ester chemiluminescence 24>. From experimental data on the reaction of e.g. bis (2.4-dinitrophenyl)oxalate with hydrogen peroxide in the presence of rubrene, they concluded that 1.2-dioxetanedione... 

The unimolecular decomposition of 1,2-dioxetanes and 1,2-dioxetanones (a-peroxylac-tones) is the simplest and most exhaustively studied example of a thermal reaction that leads to the formation, in this case in a single elementary step, of the electronically excited state of one of the product molecules. The mechanism of this transformation was studied intensively in the 1970s and early 1980s and several hundreds of 1,2-dioxetane derivatives and some 1,2-dioxetanones were synthesized and their activation parameters and CL quantum yields determined. Thermal decomposition of these cyclic peroxides leads mainly to the formation of triplet-excited carbonyl products in up to 30% yields. However, formation of singlet excited products occurs in significantly lower yields (below... 

Several other examples of 1,2-dioxetane derivatives containing easily oxidizable groups have been reported and the high singlet quantum yield observed in their decomposition was attributed to the occurrence of the intramolecular CIEEL sequence Based on this concept, Schaap and coworkers have introduced the concept of induced chemiluminescence, which is very relevant for investigations into firefly luciferin bioluminescence and has led to the development of chemiluminescent probes widely used in immunoassays (Section N. 

Alkylthio- or arylthio-substituted 1,2-dioxetanes derived from an adamantylidene vinyl system (29) undergo attack by appropriate oxygen nucleophiles in the presence of Lewis acid to form alkoxy-, aryloxy-, or acyloxy-substituted 1,2-dioxetanes (32).24 A novel, S N 1 reaction mechanism was suggested, involving species (30) and (31). 

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