Photochemistry of 2-diphenylmethoxyacetophenone. Direct detection of a long-lived enol from a Norrish Type II photoreaction

Photolysis of 2-diphenylmethoxyacetophenone (1) in deaerated acetonitrile at room temperature is expected to proceed via Norrish Type II reaction to generate benzophenone (2) and acetophenone (4) as the main isolated photoproducts. Although the acetophenone enol intermediate (3) is generally considered a putative intermediate that is a precursor of acetophenone, there are few reports of the direct spectroscopic detection of 3 when a Type II reaction is conducted in solution at room temperature. Presumably, rapid enol-ketone isomerisation under the reaction conditions causes 3 to have a very short lifetime that lowers its concentration below limits detectable by standard organic spectroscopic methods such as 1H NMR. We report that 3 is readily observed at room temperature by 1H NMR spectroscopy and showed a remarkably long lifetime of almost 1 h under our reaction conditions. It was found that the acetophenone enols from the classic Norrish Type II reactions of valerophenone and butyrophenone could also be readily detected by 1H NMR in acetonitrile at room temperature, but that their lifetimes were similar (tens of minutes) from both precursors, but were considerably shorter than that of 1. The reason for the differences in the lifetime of the acetophenone enol is probably due to small amounts of adventitious catalysts that arise during the photolysis.