EPR and optical spectroscopic studies of neutral free radicals in an adamantane matrix. [X rays

Abstract

Recent work in our laboratory has demonstrated that neutral free radicals produced by x-irradiation and trapped in adamantane exhibit exceedingly long lifetimes because of the lack of rapid diffusion in the solid matrix. This observation and the fact that samples can be pressed into pellets with high optical transparency in the visible and near uv regions of the spectrum suggested to us that this unique matrix might be used for studying the optical properties of free radicals. The results of a wide variety of experiments of this type are described in this thesis. These include experiments in which secondary free radicals are produced by photoinduced decomposition of primary free radicals by selective irradiation with visible light, the observation of strong optical absorption spectra of free radicals at room temperature using a Cary 14 spectrophotometer, the finding that certain free radicals exhibit strong, visible fluorescence when irradiated with uv light, and the discovery that the absorption intensity of multiplicity-forbidden transition in singlet and doublet state species is enhanced relative to spin-allowed transitions by at least three orders of magnitude. An analysis of these results in terms of molecular orbital theory is given, and experiments designed to obtain the epr spectra of electronically-excited states of free radicals are described.