Making Radical Cations Live Longer
The acid-catalyzed rearrangement of 1,4,5,8-tetramethylnaphthalene was used to determine the acidity of media used for EPR spectral studies of radical cations. The radical cations of methyl-substituted naphthalenes were shown to undergo dimerization reactions. The apparent persistency of the radical cation of hexamethylbenzene was due to the slow oxidation when thallium(III) trifluoroacetate was