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Updated: May 31, 2026

Photogeneration of N-Heterocyclic Carbenes: Application in Photoinduced Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymerization
12:19

Photogeneration of N-Heterocyclic Carbenes: Application in Photoinduced Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymerization

Published on: November 29, 2018

Heterocyclic radical mediated synthesis and fluorescence properties of conjugated polyene ketones

Xiangdong Zhang1, Junwei Ye, Suning Wang

  • 1State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals and School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, 2 Linggong Road, Dalian 116024, PR China.

Organic Letters
|June 21, 2011
PubMed

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Electrocyclic reactions are reversible reactions. They involve an intramolecular cyclization or ring-opening of a conjugated polyene. Shown below are two examples of electrocyclic reactions. In the first reaction, the formation of the cyclic product is favored. In contrast, in the second reaction, ring-opening is favored due to the high ring strain associated with cyclobutene formation.
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Conjugated dienes are compounds characterized by the presence of alternating double and single bonds. In a conjugated system like 1,3-butadiene, the unhybridized 2p orbital on each carbon overlaps continuously, allowing the π electrons to be delocalized across the entire molecule. In contrast, this type of overlap does not occur in cumulated and isolated dienes, such as 2,3-pentadiene and 1,4-pentadiene, respectively. Instead, the π electrons remain localized between the double...