Organic photochemistry

Organic photochemistry is the science arising from the application of photochemical methods to organic chemistry and organic chemical methods to photochemistry. It is an interdisciplinary frontier. Intense activity in organic photochemistry in the last decade has produced so vast an accumulation of factual knowledge that chemists in general have viewed it with awe. Even those chemists engaged in the study of organic photochemistry will find the rate of development in the field perplexing to a high degree.

This series originated to fill the need for a critical summary of this vigorously expanding field with the purpose of drawing together seemingly unrelated facts, summarizing progress, and clarifying problems.

Volume 11

continues to fulfill the original, essential role of this unique series by providing a convenient review of the structural aspects of organic photochemistry. As with earlier volumes, this new book offers the research findings of distinguished authorities. It stresses timely aspects of organic photochemistry—previously scattered throughout the large body of literature—for which necessary critical review has been lacking.

This volume of the series emphasizes the mechanistic details of the di-n:-methanerearrangement ... the synthetic aspects of the oxadi-n:-methane reaction ... the photochemistry of carbenium ions and related species ... photoinduced hydrogen atom abstraction by carbonyl compounds ... and matrix photochemistry of nitrenes, carbenes, and excited triplet states. Complete with numerous illustrations and bibliographic citations of the literature, this book explores these important processes to the advantage of organic chemists, as an aid to research and as a source for supplementary knowledge on particular topics.