ABSTRACT
The photochemical decarbonylation of ketones can be traced back to 1910 when acetone was photolysed in the gas phase to yield ethane and carbon monoxide.
A radical process involving
α
-cleavage (Norrish type I reaction)
and decarbonylation
as two separate steps was proposed a few years later by Norrish and Appleyard (Scheme 1). Each of the two cleavage reactions has been the subject of numerous theoretical and mechanistic studies that have been covered in several reviews.
