Room Temperature Solution ENDOR of some Super Stable Fluorocarbon Radicals

Room temperature fluorine electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) has been successfully observed for several superstable fluorocarbon radicals ·C(C2F4R)(i-C3F7)2 in solution. Three radicals were employed in which CF3, F, and O-c-C6F10SO3C2F5 were introduced as R, and all the hyperfine couplings (hfcs) obtained by ENDOR were assigned with the help of ESR simulation and ab initio MO calculation. In case of ·C(i-C3F7)3 large 13C and considerable β-fluorine couplings suggest the nonplaner arrangement for the central and three carbons at the β-position, in spite of the fact that all the methyl fluorine show the same hfc. Therefore, a rapid puckering motion along the C3 axis together with the methyl rotation should average the hfc’s of the 18 fluorine nuclei to give the same value. When one of the CF3 groups is substituted with an F nucleus, the five CF3 groups give two hfc values, suggesting some dynamics still exists for the molecular frame. When a large group, O-c-C6F10SO3C2F5, is substituted for CF3, all the five CF3 groups become nonequivalent and the ENDOR signal becomes intensive and sharp even at 290 K, indicating that the molecular frame becomes rigid. The relation between the ENDOR spectra of these systems and the intramolecular dynamics is discussed.