A DFT Study of the Photochemical Dimerization of Methyl 3-(2-Furyl)acrylate and Allyl Urocanate

A DFT study of the photochemical dimerization of methyl 3-(2-furyl)acrylate is reported. The photochemical reaction gave a mixture of two dimers with high regioselectivity and good stereoselectivity. Calculations showed that benzophenone was able to act as a photosensitizer of the reaction. This compound populated the first excited triplet state of the substrate. The frontier orbitals interaction between LSOMO of the triplet state and HOMO of the ground state accounted for the observed high regioselectivity. Furthermore, the energy of all the possible triplet biradicals has been calculated, showing that the precursor of the main product was the triplet biradical with the lowest energy. The coupling of the atomic coefficients on the radical centres in the biradical intermediates allowed to justify the observed products. The same behavior was observed in the case of the photochemical dimerization of an urocanate ester and in the dimerization of liquid methyl cinnamate.