Dinindu Mendis has published a new study on the photoreactivity of 1-azidostyrene and 3-phenyl-2H-azirine in acetonitrile and cryogenic matrices in J. Photochem. Photobiol. A

As part of this work, he mentored two high school students, Katrin Vilinsky and Bakr Alomari, who are co-authors on the publication. Katrin is now pursuing Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, while Bakr is studying Nursing at Rutgers University.

We are also deeply grateful for our collaborators at the University of Illinois Chicago, Professor A. Jean-Luc Ayitou and Abdelqader Jamhawi, whose insights and support were invaluable to this project. Of course, we also appreciate the important contributions of our team members, Dmitrii and Raj, whose efforts helped bring the study to fruition.

In this publication we show that direct irradiation of 1-azidostyrene proceeds through its singlet excited state to yield 3-phenyl-2H-azirine, bypassing the formation of a triplet vinylnitrene intermediate; when irradiated in argon matrices, 1-azidostyrene produces both 3-phenyl-2H-azirine and N-phenyl ketenimine, confirming that the latter also arises from the singlet pathway rather than through intersystem crossing of a triplet intermediate. Additionally, short-wavelength irradiation of 3-phenyl-2H-azirine leads to the formation of a phenyl nitrile ylide, while long-wavelength irradiation generates the corresponding triplet vinylnitrene, which undergoes intersystem crossing to regenerate the starting azirine. Here is a link to the paper.