Time-resolved spectroscopy, triplet carbenes

Silylenes 1 are highly reactive homologues of the carbenes, and we have been interested to compare the reactivity and primary products of the oxidation of these divalent species. In principal one can expect two different primary adducts of a silylene and molecular oxygen the formal "end-on" adducts silanone 0-oxide 2 or "side-on" adducts dioxasilirane 3 (Scheme 1). It was shown by numerous matrix studies [8-12], experiments in solution using time resolved spectroscopy [13-16], and a preparative scale synthesis in solution [17] that triplet as well as singlet carbenes yield carbonyl 0-oxides as the primary oxidation products, while dioxiranes are products of secondary photolysis. Ando et al. reported on the synthesis of the silanone 0-oxide 2e by the reaction of dimesitylsilylene le and O2 in solid argon [1]. This is so far the only experimental evidence for a silanone O-oxide. 

Time-Resolved IR Spectroscopy. More recently, time-resolved IR (TRIR) experiments have been used to characterize species with lifetimes of micro-and even nanoseconds. Since IR spectra provide structural information in more detail than UV, this technique will be more powerful than TRUV-vis if one can find a carbene that can be detected and studied by this technique. To date, however, only one carbene has been studied by using TRIR. The matrix IR study shows that the planar triplet and twisted singlet states of 2-naphthyl(methoxycartbonyl) carbenes (NMC, 17) show distinctly different IR bands (see Section 3.1.4). Both NMC and NMC are detected by TRIR in solution and their kinetics have been studied. Such experiments provide clear cut data for the reaction kinetics as well as energetics of both states (see Sections 4.2 and 4.3... 

The properties of both mentioned carbenes have been studied in detail by means of time-resolved resonance Raman spectroscopy and density functional calculations [58]. The measured spectra confirmed the triplet character... 

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