Essentials of Molecular Photochemistry

Gilbert, Andrew; Baggott, J. E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0632024291 ISBN 13: 9780632024292

Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell, 1990

This text is aimed at final year undergraduates, beginning postgraduates, and those requiring a fundamental knowledge of photophysical and photochemical processes. The first two chapters provide an introduction to the more physical and quantitative aspects of the subject. More advanced topics concerned with the interaction between matter and radiation, molecular photophysics, and emission quenching are considered in the following three chapters. Difficult concepts are presented from a qualitative (pictorial) point of view rather than a purely mathematical one and a quantum rather than a classical approach is adopted throughout. The photochemical reactions of organic compounds are classified according to chromophore type (i.e. ethenes, dienes, and ethynes, carbonyl compounds, aromatic compounds, chromophores containing nitrogen, and other organic chromophores). However, in view of the importance of photo–oxygenation processes, this is considered as a separate topic in the final chapter.

Review:

"This is the first comprehensive textbook on organic photochemistry to appear in almost fifteen years , and fills a need that many of us have felt for a very long time ... It is in my opinion the preferred book for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in photochemistry, and should be in the library of all card–carrying photochemists ... everyone involved with this project, from the authors to the typesetters, is to be congratulated on a remarkable achievement ... It will probably be a long time before a photochemistry textbook of this quality will come our way again" Inter–American Photochemical Society Newsletter