Heavy atom-containing molecules cause a photoreaction by a direct S0 → Tn transition. Therefore, even in a hypervalent iodine compound with a benzene ring as the main skeleton, the photoreaction proceeds under 365-400 nm wavelength light, where UV-visible spectra are not observed by usual measurement method. Some studies, however, report hypervalent iodine compounds that strongly absorb visible light. Herein, we report the synthesis of two visible light-absorbing hypervalent iodines and their photooxidation properties under visible light irradiation. We also demonstrated that the S0 → Tn transition causes the photoreaction to proceed under wavelengths in the blue and green light region.
Keywords: S0 → Tn transition; density functional theory (DFT) study; hypervalent iodine; visible light irradiation.