The seminar will consist of photochemical reactions in microreactors. Taking advantage of the features characteristic to microreactors, such as short molecular diffusion distance, excellent heat transfer characteristics, laminar flow and large surface to volume ratio, I investigated photochemical reactions in microreactors, that you can expect higher spatial illumination homogeneity, and better light penetration through the entire reactor depth, in comparison with large-scale reactors. Model reactions in microreactors were investigated, such as photodimerization, asymmetric photosensitized reaction, and photocatalytic oxydation, reduction, and alkylation.

 

 

Dr. Teijiro Ichimura

Professor of Physical Chemistry

Department of Chemistry and Materials Science

Graduate School of Science and Engineering

Tokyo Institute of Technology

2-12-1, Ohokayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan

Concurrent faculty position,

Professor Emeritus

Tokyo Institute of Technology

Teijiro Ichimura was born in Dairen, China, in 1945 and received a D.Sc. from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1972. He was a research associate at the Department of Chemistry at the same Institute in 1973. He was a post-Doc and also a research associate at University of Calgary in 1975–1977 to study a VUV photolysis of chlorofluoroethanes. In 1977–1978, he received a Research Associateship Award at National Research Council of Canada to get involved in a laser photochemistry. In 1979, he started to extensively study photophysics and photochemistry of benzene, hexafluorobenzene, and chlorinated benzene derivatives such as chlorobenzene, dichlorobenzenes, benzyl chloride, chlorotoluenes, with measurements of the photodecomposition quantum yield, very weak fluorescence and/or phosphorescence spectrum, and their quantum yields. In 1980s, photochemical dynamics of these molecules was investigated with sensitized phosphorescence measurement, transient absorption technique with picosecond and nanosecond laser photolysis, and photofragment spectroscopy, resonance enhanced two photon ionization and LIF measurements. During the periods, he was invited to visit the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1984, 1986, 1991, etc. and the University of Edinburgh in 1988. He was promoted to be an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1991 and a Professor of Physical Chemistry in 1998 and he belonged to Department of Chemistry and Materials Science, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Since 1995, he has been investigating spectroscopy and dynamics on jet-cooled methylanisole, aminoindan and thioanisole molecules, including the internal rotation of methyl and methoxy groups. His recent research interests include photoreactions in microreactors.

“Recent progress on photoreactions in microreactors” Y. Matsushita, T. Ichimura, N. Ohba, S. Kumada, K. Sakeda, T. Suzuki, H. Tanibata, and T. Murata, Pure Appl. Chem., 79 (2007)1959–1968.

“Photocatalytic Reactions in Microreactors” Y. Matsushita, N. Ohba, S. Kumada, K. Sakeda, T. Suzuki, T. Ichimura, Chem. Eng. J. 135S (2008), S303-S3081

T. Ichimura, Y. Matsushita, K. Sakeda, T. Suzuki, “Photoreactions”, in Microchemical Engineering in Practice, ed. by T. R. Dietrich, Blackwell Publishing, 2009.