Molecular Mechanism of the Oxidative Cleavage of Alkenes by Photoexcited Nitroarenes

by the alkene. A new species is formed, which we assign to a triplet biradical intermediate. Only ∼10% of the quenching events result in product formation. The additional loss channel is assigned to the decay of the intermediate to the starting materials. The elimination of this loss channel could significantly improve the efficiency of this reaction.