Adjacent keto and enol groups in photochemistry of a cyclic molecule: Products, mechanisms and dynamics

Dorit Shemesh, Ronnie Salomon, Stephanie Hyejin Kim, Geoffrey S. Tyndall, Sergey A. Nizkorodov, R. Benny Gerber*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

The photochemistry of carbonyl compounds is of considerable atmospheric importance, but the mechanisms and dynamics are often unknown. Here, we explore these topics for a system with adjacent keto and enol chromophoric groups. The photochemistry in the S1 and S2 states of the most stable tautomer of 1,2-cyclohexanedione, is studied theoretically using molecular dynamics simulations with a semi-empirical excited-state potential. Results are compared with experiments. The main results are: (1) Calculations provide an interpretation of the measured absorption spectrum. (2) There is good agreement between the predicted and experimental photoproducts. (3) Agreement with experiments on the products suggests the latter can be predicted without treating non-adiabatic transitions. (4) The mechanisms of formation of the products are predicted by the simulations. (5) The adjacent keto-enol system is found to be photochemically very different from the pure keto one.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)177-186
Number of pages10
JournalChemical Physics
Volume515
DOIs
StatePublished - 14 Nov 2018

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Keywords

  • 1,2-Cyclohexanedione
  • 2-Hydroxy-2-cyclohexen-1-one
  • Molecular dynamics for excited states
  • Photochemistry
  • Reaction mechanisms
  • Semi-empirical quantum-chemical potentials

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