Ketyl Radical Recombination Reaction in Various Ionic Liquids

Abstract

Ten ionic liquids were made for a series of experiments meant to help characterize the usefulness of room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) in various settings. This series of experiments used laser flash photolysis to study the effect of ionic liquids on the rate constants of the recombination of ketyl radicals, created from flash photolysis of benzophenone in the presence of benzhydrol. From the RTILs, the data showed that most ionic liquids had a faster rate constant than the diffusion limit predicted by the Einstein-Stokes-Smoluchowski equation. The main exception was that EMIM-NTf2 where the reaction was slower than its predicted diffusion limit.