Guia docente 2023_24 Facultade de Química

Organic Chemistry III: Concerted, Radical and Photochemical Reactions

Contents

Topic	Sub-topic
1. Reaction mechanisms	1.1. Reaction mechanism. Reaction profiles and transition state theory. 1.2. Reaction driving force. Frontier orbital theory. 1.3. Types of selectivity in organic transformations. 1.4. Mechanism classifications.
2. Radical reactions	2.1. Homolytic vs. heterolytic bond breaking. 2.2. Radical stability. 2.3. Chain reactions, alkane halogenation. 2.4. Radical polymerizations. 2.5. Radical reductions and reductive couplings. 2.6. Radical reactions in nature.
3. Pericyclic reactions	3.1. Woodward-Hoffmann rules. Orbital symmetry conservation and transition state aromaticity. Thermal and photochemical allowed and forbidden reactions. 3.2. Electrocyclizations. 3.3. Cycloadditions. Frontier orbital theory. 3.4. Sigmatropic and ene reactions.
4. Photochemical reactions	4.1. UV/vis spectra of organic molecules. Properties of excited states. 4.2. Photophysical processes: unimolecular deactivation, internal conversion, intersystem crossing, emission (fluorescence, phosphorescence). 4.3. Double bond isomerizations. 4.4. Photodissociations. 4.5. Photoreductions. 4.6. Pericyclic reactions. 4.7. Photochemical reactions in nature.
5. Laboratory work	Practical work on experiments related to the previous sections of the course. Synthesis, purification and characterization of organic compounds.
6. Molecular modeling	Use of computational chemistry tools to study the properties of organic molecules and reaction mechanisms associated to the previous sections of the course.