Photoinitiators allow the production of polymers and coatings with high control and variety in the process parameters. [1] A broad range of technical applications, unthinkable a few years ago, have now been firmly established. [2] These developments were also driven by the syntheses of new types of photoinitiators. [3] Starting from simple peroxides or a-hydroxy ketones, functionalized oxime esters, [4] organo phosphorus, [1] or, more recently, germanium compounds [5,6] have been developed as highly sophisticated photoinitiators with specific properties. [7,8] Among these, intensively studied mono-acylphosphane oxides (MAPOs, such as Ph 2 PO(COMes), Mes = mesityl; trade name Lucirin TPO) and especially bis-(acyl)phosphane oxides [BAPOs, such as PhPO(COMes) 2 ; trade name IRGACURE 819] stand out owing to their excellent efficiency and activity. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Irradiation with even a weak light source in the visible range leads to the formation of a phosphinoyl and an acyl radical through a Norrish type I cleavage reaction [Eq. (1)]:BAPOs offer several unique advantages: 1) Photolysis yields a total of up to four radicals, with the phosphinoyl radical about 1000 times more reactive than the acyl radicals. 2) Light in the visible region is absorbed by BAPOs (l = 360-440 nm), but the cleavage products are transparent. This property leads to a high curing depth and allows BAPOs to be applied as initiators, even for relatively thick clear coatings. 3) BAPOs show a relatively high thermal stability (> 100 8C) and can be easily stored. [17,18] Despite their widespread industrial use, very few BAPO derivatives have been synthesized to date. [19] The reported synthetic routes requiring a primary phosphane (RPH 2 ) or a metallated derivative (RPH 2Àx M x ) are incompatible with many functional groups and only aryl or alkyl substituents are bound to the phosphorus atom. Herein, we report a simple method for the synthesis of P-functionalized BAPO derivatives (Scheme 1), which offers interesting possibilities for surface modification.NaPH 2 is easily obtained from elemental phosphorus, sodium, and tert-butanol in the form of a sodium tert-butylate aggregate, which is a versatile starting material for functional phosphorus compounds. [20] Without prior isolation, the aggregate compound NaPH 2 (NaOtBu) x 1 was reacted with mesitoyl chloride to give sodium bis(mesitoyl)phosphide 2 in > 80 % yield as bright yellow crystals (Scheme 1). The structure of 2 (Figure 1) was obtained from a X-ray diffraction study with crystals obtained from a hot toluene/THF mixture (10:1) that contained residual dimethoxyethane (DME). [21] This compound Na 2 [P(COMes) 2 ] 2 ·2 THF·DME, contains two almost planar six-membered NaO 2 C 2 P rings formed by the P(COMes) 2 À anion, which is structurally similar to an acetylacetonate ion, chelating one sodium cation. These rings aggregate to form a strongly folded central Na 2 O 2 ring. Scheme 1. Synthesis of P-functionalized bis(acyl)phosphane oxides (BAPOs). FG = functional group, Mes = mes...