Abstract
DURING the course of our recent work on the photochemistry of butyric acid and its methyl ester1, some spectroscopic confirmation was sought that their absorption spectra and those of the aldehydes and ketones are due to the same electronic transition. The absorption spectra are similar in form and have comparable extinction coefficients, but the absorption maxima of the acids and esters are displaced to lower wavelengths, as column 2, Table 1, illustrates. There is little doubt that they are due to the same transition, for the primary photochemical reactions are similar and the carbonyl group in the acids maintains its identity, although it is naturally modified by the neighbouring hydroxyl group2.
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BORRELL, P. A Correlation between the Shift in the Ultra-Violet Absorption Maxima and the Electronegativity of the Adjacent Atoms in some Aliphatic Carbonyl Compounds. Nature 184, 1932–1933 (1959). https://doi.org/10.1038/1841932b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1841932b0
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