A STUDY OF THE NATURE OF FREE RADICALS IN IRRADIATED CHEMICAL SYSTEMS

摘要

In order to better evaluate the factors which dictate the susceptibility of organic compounds to form free radicals on exposure to ionizing radiation and the nature and fate of said radicals, a study has been made of the radia¬tion chemistry of various organic compounds. The compounds studied were chosen in order to ascertain the effect of structure and presence of functional groups within the basic carbon skeleton on the radiation damaging of the various substrates. Compounds studied were n-, sec-, and tert-butyl iodides, tert-butyl amine, n-butanol, n-butyric acid, and ethyl acetate. The alkyl iodides were studied in order to ascertain the effect of structural isomerism on a system whose primary dissociative step is known, i.e. carbon-iodine bond fission. The other compounds were studied in order to evaluate the effect of changing the functional group (alcohol, amine, acid, etc.) and the over-all structure (ester) in a four carbon organic system.