Oxygen singlet state

In the first place, the apparent insensitivity of many (perhaps most) of the photolyses to oxygen would seem to limit consideration of intermediates to those species known to be insensitive to oxygen singlet states (whose lifetimes are short, about 10 9 sec, and whose steady-state concentrations are very low), or to other reactions which are too fast to be affected by oxygen, such as electron-transfer reactions. The reason for this conclusion is that oxygen is known to be a very efficient quencher for the longer-lived triplet states, and most reactions of triplet... 

Typical singlet lifetimes are measured in nanoseconds while triplet lifetimes of organic molecules in rigid solutions are usually measured in milliseconds or even seconds. In liquid media where drfifiision is rapid the triplet states are usually quenched, often by tire nearly iibiqitoiis molecular oxygen. Because of that, phosphorescence is seldom observed in liquid solutions. In the spectroscopy of molecules the tenn fluorescence is now usually used to refer to emission from an excited singlet state and phosphorescence to emission from a triplet state, regardless of the actual lifetimes. 

A principal appHcation for photomedicine is the photodynamic treatment of cancer. Photochemical and clinical aspects of this topic have been reviewed (10,11). Direct irradiation of tumors coupled with adininistration of a sensitizer is used to effect necrosis of the malignancy. In this process, an excited state sensitizer interacts with dissolved in vivo to effect conversion of the oxygen from its triplet ground state to an excited singlet state, which is highly cytotoxic. In principle, excited sensitizers in either the singlet or the triplet state can effect this conversion of molecular oxygen (8). In... 

Run a stability calculation on the true (triplet) ground state of molecular oxygen. What is the energy difference between the ground state and the singlet state ... 

The blue colour of oxygen in the liquid and solid phases is due to electronic transitions by which molecules in the triplet ground state are excited to the singlet states. These transitions are normally forbidden in pure gaseous oxygen and, in any case, they occur in the infrared region of the spectrum at 7918 cm" ( Ag) and 13 195 cm" ( ]+). However, in the condensed phases a... 

The lack of any difference in the rate of isomerization between fluoro-sulfonic acid solutions of 34 which had been thoroughly degassed, and those which were saturated with oxygen, suggests that the reaction does not proceed via a triplet mechanism. In fluorosulfonic acid no unproton-ated acid is detected, ruling out the possibility of n,7r excitation. Thus, there is little doubt in this case that it is the Tr,Tr singlet state which is the reactive species. Experiments carried out with a variety of methyl-substituted protonated cydohexadienones have likewise ruled out the... 

Consequently, the antioxidant activity of GA in biological systems is still an unresolved issue, and therefore it requires a more direct knowledge of the antioxidant capacity of GA that can be obtained by in vitro experiments against different types of oxidant species. The total antioxidant activity of a compound or substance is associated with several processes that include the scavenging of free radical species (eg. HO, ROO ), ability to quench reactive excited states (triplet excited states and/ or oxygen singlet molecular 1O2), and/or sequester of metal ions (Fe2+, Cu2+) to avoid the formation of HO by Fenton type reactions. In the following sections, we will discuss the in vitro antioxidant capacity of GA for some of these processes. 

Thus we end up with an oxygen atom which is somewhat electron deficient and a carbon atom which is electron rich. The oxygen then would be expected to behave as an electrophilic reagent and the carbon (or rather the regions bounded by the w orbital) should behave as a nucleophilic reagent. The amphoteric nature of the carbonyl n- n singlet state is mirrored in its reactivity toward electron-rich and electron-deficient olefins. 

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