Development of Highly Sensitive Photoreactive Materials Utilizing Photobase-generating Reactions and Base Proliferation Reactions

Only a few articles have mentioned photoreactive materials relying on base-catalyzed transformations have been reported. This is probably due to relatively low quantum yields for photobase generation and weaker basicity of photogenerated bases, leading to low photosensitivity of photoreactive materials sensitized with photobase generators (PBGs). We report here novel PBGs to release organic strong bases with high quantum yields and a novel concept of base proliferation to improve the photosensitivity of the photoreactive materials. The concept involves the base-catalyzed decomposition of an organic compound termed a base amplifier (BA) which produces a newborn base molecule, leading to its autocatalytic decomposition. The addition of BAs to the photoreactive materials resulted in the marked improvement of photosensitivity because the number of photogenerated base molecules increases markedly as a result of the base proliferation reaction of the doped BA.