Seven racemic derivatives of Tröger’s base—the 1,7‐dibromo‐substituted derivative 3, the 2,8‐dibromo‐substituted derivative 4, the 2,8‐diiodo‐substituted derivative 5, the 3,9‐diiodo‐substituted derivative 6, the 4,10‐dibromo‐substituted derivative 7, its singly debrominated analogue 8, and the 2,8‐diamino‐substituted derivative 9 in its Fmoc‐protected form—were synthesized and successfully resolved by (recycling) HPLC on a stationary Whelk‐O1 phase at a semipreparative scale. These are valuable functionalized C2‐symmetric building blocks for further applications. Their absolute configurations were determined by X‐ray crystal structure analysis and/or by comparison of their quantum chemically calculated circular dichroism and UV/Vis spectra with the experimental obtained spectra.

Femtosecond spectroscopy with hyperspectral white-light detection was used to elucidate the ultrafast primary processes of the thermodynamically stable organic radical, 1,3,5-triphenylverdazyl, in liquid acetonitrile solution at room temperature. The radical was excited with optical pulses having a duration of 39 fs and a center wavelength of 800 nm thereby accessing its energetically lowest electronically excited state (D1). The apparent spectrotemporal response is understood in terms of an ultrafast primary D1-to-D0 internal conversion that generates the electronic ground state of the radical in a highly vibrationally excited fashion within a few hundred femtoseconds. The replenished electronic ground state subsequently undergoes vibrational cooling on a time scale of a few picoseconds. The instantaneous absorption spectra of the radical derived from the femtosecond pump-probe data are analyzed within the Sulzer-Wieland formalism for calculating the electronic spectra of "hot" polyatomic molecules. The pump-probe spectra together with transient anisotropy data in the region of the D0 → D1 ground-state bleach gives evidence for an additional transient absorption that arises from a dark excited state, which gains oscillator strength with increasing vibrational excitation of the radical by virtue of vibronic coupling.

The eminent role of metallacyclobutadienes as catalytic intermediates in organic synthesis and polymer chemistry is widely acknowledged. In contrast, their photochemistry is as yet entirely unexplored. Herein, the photo-induced primary processes of a ferracyclobutadiene tricarbonyl complex in solution are revealed by femtosecond mid-infrared spectroscopy. The time-resolved vibrational spectra expose an ultrafast substitution of a basal CO ligand by a solvent molecule in a consecutive dissociation-association mechanism. Following optical excitation, the system relaxes non-radiatively to the triplet ground state from which a CO is expelled. Since the triplet state is bound with respect to Fe-CO cleavage, the dissociation can only occur from vibrationally excited states. The excitation energy, vibrational relaxation, and intersystem crossing to the singlet ground state control the primary quantum yield for formation of the ferracyclic dicarbonyl-solvent product complex.