Photoexcitation reaction

Photoexcited electrons or holes migrate in a space charge layer towards the electrode interface, where they participate in transfer reactions of cathodic electrons or anodic holes to provide a reaction current as shown in Pig. 10-9. Such a reaction current of photoexcited electrons or holes is called the photoexcited reaction current or simply the photocurrent. 

Fig. 10-9. Photoexcited reaction current (photocurrent) at semicon ductor electrodes (a) photoexcited reaction of cathodic electron transfer (OX + e - RED) at p-type semiconductor electrode, (b) photoexcited reaction of anodic hole transfer (RED - OX + e) at n-type semiconductor electrode, iph = photocurrent.

As shown in Fig. 10-9, the photoexcited reaction current occurs only when an appreciable electric field exists in the space chai ge layer. No photocurrent occurs at the flat band potential because no electric field that is required to separate the photoexcited electron-hole pairs is present. The photocurrent occurs at any potentials different from the flat band potential hence, the flat band potential may be regarded as the potential for the onset of the photocurrent. It follows, then, that photoexcited electrode reactions may occur at potentials at which the same electrode reactions are thermodynamically impossible in the dark. 

An amazing discovery (Gracie, C., M.Sc. Thesis, University of Toronto, 1985) was made when the photoexcitation reaction... 

There has been recent interest in a somewhat different aspect of adsorption and reaction on metal oxides photocatalysis. The interest stems partially from that role that some transition-metal oxides can play in photochemical reactions in the atmosphere. Atmospheric aerosol particles can act as substrates to catalyze heterogeneous photochemical reactions in the troposphere. Most tropospheric aerosols are silicates, aluminosilicates and salts whose bandgaps are larger than the cutoff of solar radiation in the troposphere (about 4.3 eV) they are thus unable to participate directly in photoexcited reactions. However, transition-metal oxides that have much smaller bandgaps also occur as aerosols — the most prevalent ones are the oxides of iron and manganese — and these materials may thus undergo charge-transfer excitations (discussed above) in the pres-... 

ET is usually the only process occurring in pulse radiolysis, whereas electronic energy transfer may compete with ET in photoexcited reactions, and it is sometimes uncertain which process is responsible for observed rates. 

In a related study of the photodissociation of CH3I into CH3 and I the same group observed a signal which indicated that a fraction of the CH3I molecules appeared to recombine inside the droplets. Additionally, the iodine from both photoexcited reactions and the CH3 fragment were found to leave the droplets complexed with up to a maximum of 17 helium... 

According to Kramers model, for flat barrier tops associated with predominantly small barriers, the transition from the low- to the high-damping regime is expected to occur in low-density fluids. This expectation is home out by an extensively studied model reaction, the photoisomerization of tran.s-stilbene and similar compounds [70, 71] involving a small energy barrier in the first excited singlet state whose decay after photoexcitation is directly related to the rate coefficient of tran.s-c/.s-photoisomerization and can be conveniently measured by ultrafast laser spectroscopic teclmiques. 

It turned out that the dodecylsulfate surfactants Co(DS)i Ni(DS)2, Cu(DS)2 and Zn(DS)2 containing catalytically active counterions are extremely potent catalysts for the Diels-Alder reaction between 5.1 and 5.2 (see Scheme 5.1). The physical properties of these micelles have been described in the literature and a small number of catalytic studies have been reported. The influence of Cu(DS)2 micelles on the kinetics of quenching of a photoexcited species has been investigated. Interestingly, Kobayashi recently employed surfactants in scandium triflate catalysed aldol reactions". Robinson et al. have demonshuted that the interaction between metal ions and ligand at the surface of dodecylsulfate micelles can be extremely efficient. ... 

The photosensitized dimerization of isoprene in the presence of henzil has been investigated. Mixtures of substituted cyclobutanes, cyclohexenes, and cyclooctadienes were formed and identified (53). The reaction is beheved to proceed by formation of a reactive triplet intermediate. The energy for this triplet state presumably is obtained by interaction with the photoexcited henzil species. Under other conditions, photolysis results in the formation of a methylcydobutene (54,55). 

The chain addition of formamide to alkenes is a closely related reaction. It results in the formation of primary amides. The reaction is carried out with irradiation in acetone. The photoexcited acetone initiates the chain reaction by abstracting hydrogen from formamide ... 

In this chapter, the discussion will center on the reactions of excited states, rather than on the other routes available for dissipation of excess energy. The chemical reactions of photoexcited molecules are of interest primarily for three reasons ... 

One of the most common reactions of photoexcited carbonyl groups is hydrogen-atom abstraction from solvent or some other hydrogen donor. A second common reaction is cleavage of the carbon-carbon bond adjacent to the carbonyl group ... 

In 2-propanoI, the quantum yield for photolytic conversion of benzophenone to the coupled reduction product is 2.0. The reason is that the radical remaining after abstraction of a hydrogen atom from 2-propanol transfers a hydrogen atom to ground-state benzophenone in a nonphotochemical reaction. Because of this process, two molecules of benzophenone are reduced for each one that is photoexcited ... 

The reaction course taken by photoexcited cycloalkenes in hydroxylic solvents depends on ring size. 1-Methylcyclohexene, 1-methylcycloheptene, and 1-methylcyclooc-tene all add methanol, but neither 1-methylcyclopentene nor norbomene does so. The key intermediate in the addition reactions is believed to be the highly reactive -isomer of the cycloalkene. 

According to Quinkert, photoexcited cyclic ketones may be transformed to open-chain unsaturated carboxylic acids in the presence of molecular oxygen. This reaction may compete efficiently with a-cleavage and secondary transformations thereof. Thus, both stereo iso meric 17-ketones (109) and (110) yield as much as 20% of the unsaturated acid (111) when irradiated in benzene under a stream of oxygen. This photolytic autoxidation has been used notably for partial syntheses of naturally occurring unsaturated 3,4-seco-acids from 3-oxo triterpenes (for references, see ref. 72). 

Neutron activation analysis of a polymer suggests that when Py is used as the electron doner (D), the initiation proceeds through the Cl atom, but when D = DMSO, both Cr and DMSO residues are the primary radicals produced from the photoexcited ion-pair complex. The following reaction scheme is proposed ... 

It has been proposed that the monomer undergo an insertion reaction into the V—Cl bond of the photoexcited chelate molecule, resulting in decomposition of the chelate in the anon-radical route. 

Meanwhile, it was found by Asai and colleagues [48] that tetraphenylphosphonium salts having such anions as Cl, Br , and Bp4 work as photoinitiators for radical polymerization. Based on the initiation effects of changing counteranions, they proposed that a one-electron transfer mechanism is reasonable in these initiation reactions. However, in the case of tetraphenylphosphonium tetrafluoroborate, it cannot be ruled out that direct homolysis of the p-phenyl bond gives the phenyl radical as the initiating species since BF4 is not an easily pho-tooxidizable anion [49]. Therefore, it was assumed that a similar photoexcitable moiety exists in both tetraphenyl phosphonium salts and triphenylphosphonium ylide, which can be written as the following resonance hybrid [17] (Scheme 21) ... 

The transfer of an electron from a photoexcited donor molecule (D) to an acceptor molecule (A) to generate a highly reactive radical ion pair is the most fundamental photochemical reaction, and it can be generally expressed as... 

It lias also been suggested that photoexcited benzoyl peroxide is somewhat more susceptible to induced decomposition processes involving electron transfer than the ground state molecule. Rosenthal et c//.15 reported on redox reactions with certain salts (including benzoate ion) and neutral molecules (e.g. alcohols). 

The reaction between the photoexcited carbonyl compound and an amine occurs with substantially greater facility than that with most other hydrogen donors. The rate constants for triplet quenching by amines show little dependence on the amine a-C-H bond strength. However, the ability of the amine to release an electron is important.- - This is in keeping with a mechanism of radical generation which involves initial electron (or charge) transfer from the amine to the photoexcited carbonyl compound. Loss of a proton from the resultant complex (exciplex) results in an a-aminoalkyl radical which initiates polymerization. The... 

The absorption of radiation produces unstable species. Flash photolysis does so by interaction of light with a solute. The transient may be a photoexcited state or a molecular fragment. Pulse radiolysis starts with highly reactive entities formed by dissociation of the solvent (e.g., H, eaq, and HO from H20) and consists of a study of their reactions or of reactive transients derived from them. In either case one monitors the ensuing reactions by luminescence (for excited states), light absorption, or conductivity changes. 

Typical chemical reactions of photoexcited aldehydes and ketones are cleavage reactions, usually designated as Norrish Type I [equation (54)], II [equation (55)] and III [equation (56)], hydrogen abstraction [equation (57)] and cycloadditions, such as the Paterno-Buchi reaction [equation (58)]. Of these, Norrish Type II cleavage and the related... 

Assuming that the reaction probability of all the elementary processes is equal in the reaction of 1,4-DCB crystals, the calculated yields of unreacted 1,4-DCB, cyclophane, and oligomer by simulation, should be 1.8, 37.7, and 60.5% by weight, respectively. Furthermore, if all the photoexcited species of the monocyclic dimer are assumed to be converted into cyclophane, these yields should become 6.9, 65.6 and 27.5%. It is, therefore, rather surprising that in an extreme case of the experiment the yield of cyclophane is more than 90% while the amount of unreacted 1,4-DCB is less than 2%. One plausible mechanism to explain this result is that the first formation of cyclophane induces the successive formation of cyclophane so as to enhance its final yield. If such an induction mechanism plays an appreciable role, an optically active cyclophane zone may be formed, at least in a micro spot surrounding the first molecule of cyclophane, as illustrated in Scheme 13. The assumption of an induction mechanism was verified later in the photoreaction of 7 OMe crystals (see p. 151). 

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