Recent Advances in Di--methane Photochemistry: A New Look at a Classical Reaction

Studies of di--methane photochemical rearrangements have been one of the main areas of research in organic photochemistry for many years (for reviews, see Refs. 1-4). The first example of a reaction of this type was reported by Zimmerman in 1967 in the sensitized irradiation of barrelene 1 that yields semibullvalene 2 [5] (Scheme 1). The reaction has been extended to a large number of acyclic and cyclic 1,4-dienes that yield the corresponding vinylcyclopropanes on irradiation, in the di--methane (DPM) version of the rearrangement. This reaction also takes place when a vinyl unit is replaced by an aryl group. A few representative examples of DPM rearrangements are shown in Scheme 1 [6-9].