Photochemistry of 1,1′-bi-2-naphthol (BINOL) — ESIPT is responsible for photoracemization and photocyclization
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The photochemistry of 1,1′-bi-2-naphthol (BINOL, 5) has been studied in aqueous solution and found to undergo rapid deuterium incorporation at the 4 and 5 positions (in D2O-CH3CN). All data is consistent with exchange arising via a formal excited state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT) from the naphtholic OH to the 4 and 5 positions of the other ring to give quinine methides (QMs) 8 and 9, respectively, both of which subsequently revert to starting material. Photolysis of enantiomerically pure (+)-5 in D2O-CH3CN resulted in racemization concurrent with deuterium incorporation. This is strong evidence to indicate that photoracemization of BINOL is a direct result of ESIPT, in keeping with the invocation of planar QM intermediates. Prolonged irradiation also gave a ring-closed product that is assigned as dihydrobenzoxanthene 7, based on NMR and UV–vis data, and in analogy to known reactions of similar biaryl systems initiated by ESIPT. The formation of 7 is believed to arise via initial ESIPT from the naphtholic OH to the 7 position of the other naphthol ring generating an o-quinone methide intermediate that subsequently undergoes exclusive electrocyclic ring closure to give 7. The deuterium exchange and photocyclization reach maximum quantum efficiency at ~8 mol/L water (in CH3CN). A “water relay” mechanism for ESIPT is proposed that is consistent with the need for water in the photochemical deuterium exchange, racemization, and formation of 7. The photostability and photoracemization of other related BINOL asymmetric catalysts in water should be a concern based on the reported results herein.Key words: BINOL, ESIPT, photoprotonation, photoracemization, photocyclization, quinone methide.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".