Important role of reaction field in photodegradation of deca-bromodiphenyl ether: Theoretical and experimental investigations of solvent effects

Photolysis of deca-bromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209) was investigated in tetrahydrofuran, dichloromethane, isopropanol, acetone, ethanol, methanol, acetonitrile and dimethylsulfoxide. Noticeable differences of the photolytic rates and quantum yields were found in the diverse solvents. Different to the previous deductions, hydrogen donating efficiency and electron donating efficiency of solvents were not the decisive factors for the photolytic rate in this study, which was proved by the fast photolysis of BDE-209 in CCl4, a solvent without hydrogen and difficult to donate electrons. Besides hydrogen addition process, intermolecular polymerization might occur during the photolysis. Density functional theory (DFT) calculation was performed to understand the molecular properties of BDE-209 in different solvents. The lowest singlet vertical excitation energy (Eex) and the average formal charge on Br (qBr+) of BDE-209, reflecting the difficulty for the excitation of BDE-209 and for the departing of Br atom, respectively, were changed by the reaction fields formed by the different solvents. Eex and qBr+ linearly correlated with the photolytic activity (log k). This study is helpful to better understand the photolytic behavior of BDE-209 in different media.