Medium, hydrocarbon living

In aromatic hydrocarbons, short-lived ](it, it ) is the lowest excited state and energy gap between (n, it ) and 8(it, it ) states is large. Both these factors are conducive to fluorescence emission and in general aromatic hydrocarbons are good fluorescer. Sometimes, the prediction may not come true if a higher triplet state T2 is available near the St state such as in anthracene. In such cases, fluorescence and phosphorescence both are observed at low temperatures in suitable solvent medium specially when S, and T, are states of different symmetry type. Some data correlating AEst and 4[Pg.148]

The radical model cannot be applied for ionic and coordination polymerizations. With a few exceptions, termination by mutual combination of active centres does not occur. The only possibility is to measure the rate of each copolymerization independently. The situation can be greatly simplified for copolymerizations in living systems. The constants ku and k22 can usually be measured easily in homopolymerizations. Also, the coaddition constants fc12 or k2] are often directly accessible when the M] and M2 active centres can be differentiated spectroscopically or when the rate of monomer M2 (M[) consumption at M] M 2 centres can be measured. Ionic equibria, association, polarity of medium and solvation must be respected, even when their quantitative effect is not known exactly. The unusual situations confronting macromolecular chemistry will be demonstrated by the example of the anionic copolymerization of styrene with butadiene initiated by lithium alkyls in hydrocarbon medium. 

There are two predominant challenges to direct observation of alkanes coordinated to transition metals (1) the short-lived nature of metal/alkane complexes and (2) competition for coordination of the alkane to the metal center. Because of the weak binding energy, alkane coordination is typically short-lived. Thus, fast spectroscopy techniques are required, and these techniques are often coupled with low temperatures in order to slow processes that result in alkane dissociation. In addition to the rapid dissociation of alkanes, most organic substrates will effectively compete (kinetically and thermodynamically) with alkanes for coordination to metals. Thus, the reaction medium is an important consideration since most common solvents are better ligands than alkanes, and attempts to observe alkane coordination have been commonly performed in the gas phase, in hydrocarbon matrices, or in liquid krypton or xenon. Finally, photolysis is generally required to dissociate a ligand at low temperature to create a transient coordination site for the alkane. 

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