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Photocatalytic dechlorination of unactivated chlorocarbons including PVC using organolanthanide complexes
Amy E Kynman1,2, Stella Christodoulou3, Erik T Ouellette1,2
1Dept of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. pla@berkeley.edu.
Abstract:
Simple lanthanide cyclopentadienyl (Cp) complexes can photochemically cleave the sp3 carbon-chlorine bond of unactivated chlorinated hydrocarbons including polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The excited state lifetimes of these simple complexes are among the longest observed for cerium complexes (175 ns for [(CpMe4)2Ce(μ-Cl)]2) and the light absorption by the Cp ligand is efficient, so photocatalytic reactivity is enhanced for cerium and now also made possible for neighboring, normally photoinactive, lanthanide congeners.
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