Properties of aryl azides

Aryl azides which were introduced as photoaffinity reagents by Fleet et al. (1969) are now the most commonly used photoactivatable reagents. By early 1976 there were almost one hundred examples of their use (Bayley and Knowles, 1977) and today it would be impracticable to list a complete bibliography. The ease of synthesis of aryl azides, and not their other desirable properties, is probably responsible for their great popularity. 

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Both spectral and photochemical properties of aryl azides are determined by the relative positions of the same frontier MOs. The position of the long-wavelength absorption band depends first of all on the value of the HOMO-... 

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