Organic Photochemistry

ABOUT THE COURSE: The course is designed to teach the fundamentals of photochemical reactions to cover the postgraduate syllabus of many Indian universities. This course is taught as a core course of the program. Since photochemistry is a prominent area of study in many chemistry fields, most students find it essential to have a basic and advanced understanding of these reactions. The syllabus covers the topics like: Fundamental Principles of Photochemistry, Photochemistry of organic compounds like Alkenes, dienes, carbonyl compounds, aromatic compounds, etc.INTENDED AUDIENCE: MSc ( Chemistry)PREREQUISITES: B.Sc (Chemistry)INDUSTRY SUPPORT: Pharmaceuticals and fine chemical companies

Week 1: Fundamental Principles of Photochemistry, Absorption of light by molecules: direct and indirect excitation, electronically excited states, types of excitation, and laws of photochemistry. Photophysical processes: radiative (fluorescence, phosphorescence), non-radiative (state-to-state crossing, vibrational relaxation), combination of radiative and non-radiative processes, Jablonski diagram.

Week 2:Homogeneous and heterogeneous photoelectron transfer reactions: principles and few selected examples Classification of photochemical reactions ( adiabatic, Non-adiabatic, and Hot-ground reactions), Franck-Condon principle, Quantum Yield

Week 3:Photochemistry of Alkenes: Intramolecular reactions of the olefinic bond: geometrical isomerism, cyclization reactions, rearrangement of 1, 4-and 1, 5-dienes, photochemistry of barrelene, dibenzobarrelene, dibenzoyl alkene, dibenzoyl alkenes.

Week 4:Photochemistry of Carbonyl Compounds: Intramolecular reactions of carbonyl compounds: saturated, cyclic and acyclic Photochemistry of α, β - Unsaturated and - β, λ unsaturated compounds, and Cyclohexadienone.

Week 5:cycloaddition reactions of carbonyl compounds to alkenes (intra and intermolecular) oxetane formation, stereochemistry of the product.

Week 6:Photochemistry of Aromatic Compounds: Photoinduced isomerizations of benzene and its alkyl derivatives, 1, 2; 1, 3 and 1, 4-photocycloaddition reactions of benzene. Nucleophilic photosubstitution reactions in aromatic compounds.

Week 7:Named Photochemical Reactions: Photo-Fries rearrangement. Barton reaction, Hoffmann-Loeffler- Freytag reaction, Singlet molecular oxygen reactions Photo-Bergman cyclisation. Photochemical, Nazarov cyclization. Photo-Favorskii rearrangement, Bicyclic rearrangement, Photochemical Wolf

Week 8:Heterogeneous photoinduced electron transfer reactions: semiconductor mediated reactions, synthesis of visible light active catalyst. Characterization using different analytical techniques. Photocatalytic performance by studying the degradation of organic compounds in aqueous suspension under visible light