Abstract
IN the course of unsuccessful attempts to use metanitrophenylphosphate as a photochemical phosphorylating agent1, we noted the appearance of pyrophosphate in a number of our control tubes. Further experiments have shown that ultra-violet irradiation of solutions of phosphoric acid or tetrabutylammonium dihydrogen phosphate in certain pyridine derivatives or in aliphatic ketones leads to the formation of condensed phosphates. In this communication we describe our semi-quantitative observations on these systems. We examined 0.01–0.05 M solutions of phosphate in the following solvents: pyridine, 2-, 3-, and 4-picoline, acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, pyruvic acid, acetylacetone, benzaldehyde, acetophenone, anisole, n-butyraldehyde and propionaldehyde. Only in those listed in Table 1 were we able to detect pyrophosphate. (The sensitivity of our method was ≈0.5 per cent conversion.) Irradiations were carried out in a RPR-100 ‘Rayonet’ photochemical chamber using RPR-2537 Å lamps for the ketone solution and RPR-3500 Å lamps for the pyridine solutions. The solutions were contained in quartz tubes 10 mm in diameter. The temperature of the solutions was 45° ± 5° C.
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Havinga, E., DeJongh, R. O., and Dorst, W., Rec. Trav. Chim., 75, 378 (1956).
The phosphates were analysed by paper chromatography ( Kolloff, R. H., Anal. Chem., 33, 373 (1961), and Fuchs, R. J., and Czeh, F. W., Anal. Chem., 35, 769 (1963)).
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BECK, A., ORGHL, L. Photochemical Synthesis of Condensed Phosphates. Nature 208, 1000 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/2081000a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/2081000a0
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