Chapter 2: The Nature of Chemiluminescent Reactions

Chemiluminescence has evolved from being an interested fact, via a promising analytical technique, to a fairly well understood phenomenon. The research during the last two decades has resulted in a much better understanding of the chemistry of chemiluminescence. This has lead to exciting (sic) new systems which are not only interesting from a basic scientific perspective, but also has resulted in commercial exploitation of chemiluminescence in all kinds of applications. This chapter surveys the most important chemiluminescent systems (for example, those involving luminol, dioxetanes, acridan esters, peroxyoxalates), and describes the properties of such chemiluminescent systems and the known or hypothesised molecular mechanisms involved in their chemiluminescence emission.