Direct Spectroscopic Detection and EPR Investigation of a Ground State Triplet Phenyl Oxenium Ion.

Oxenium ions are important reactive intermediates in synthetic chemistry and enzymology, but little is known of the reactivity, lifetimes, spectroscopic signatures, and electronic configurations of these unstable species. Recent advances have allowed these short-lived ions to be directly detected in solution from laser flash photolysis of suitable photochemical precursors, but all of the studies to date have focused on aryloxenium ions having closed-shell singlet ground state configurations. To study alternative spin configurations, we synthesized a photoprecursor to the m-dimethylamino phenyloxenium ion, which is predicted by both density functional theory and MRMP2 computations to have a triplet ground state electronic configuration.

Direct spectroscopic observation of closed-shell singlet, open-shell singlet, and triplet p-biphenylyloxenium ion.

The photophysics and photochemistry of p-biphenylyl hydroxylamine hydrochloride was studied using laser flash photolysis ranging from the femtosecond to the microsecond time scale. The singlet excited state of this photoprecursor is formed within 350 fs and partitions into three different transients that are assigned to the p-biphenyloxy radical, the open-shell singlet p-biphenylyloxenium ion, and the triplet p-biphenylyloxenium ion, having lifetimes of 40 μs, 45 ps, and 1.6 ns, respectively, in CH3CN.

Direct detection and reactivity of the short-lived phenyloxenium ion.

Photolysis of protonated phenylhydroxylamine was studied using product analysis, trapping experiments, and laser flash photolysis experiments (UV-vis and TR(3) detection) ranging from the femtosecond to the microsecond time scale. We find that the excited state of the photoprecursor is followed by two species: a longer-lived transient (150 ns) that we assign to the phenoxy radical and a shorter-lived (3-20 ns) transient that we assign to the singlet phenyloxenium ion. Product studies from photolysis of this precursor show rearranged protonated o-/p-aminophenols and solvent water adducts (catechol, hydroquinone) and ammonium ion.

Heteroaryl oxenium ions have diverse and unusual low-energy electronic states.

The electronic state orderings and energies of heteroaryl oxenium ions were computed using high-level CASPT2//CASSCF computations. We find that these ions have a number of diverse, low-energy configurations. Depending on the nature of the heteroaryl substituent, the lowest-energy configuration may be open-shell singlet, closed-shell singlet, or triplet, with further diversity found among the subtypes of these configurations.

Phenyloxenium ions: more like phenylnitrenium ions than isoelectronic phenylnitrenes?

The geometries and energies of the electronic states of phenyloxenium ion 1 (Ph-O(+)) were computed at the multireference CASPT2/pVTZ level of theory. Despite being isoelectronic to phenylnitrene 4, the phenyloxenium ion 1 has remarkably different energetic orderings of its electronic states. The closed-shell singlet configuration ((1)A(1)) is the ground state of the phenyloxenium ion 1, with a computed adiabatic energy gap of 22.