Benzophenone derivatives having various tetraalkylammonium ion in the 4 position (II, III, IV, and V) were found to be much more efficient sensitizers than benzophenone(I) in photooxidation of Leuco Crystal Violet(LCV) to Crystal Violet(CV+) in acetonitrile in air, which was interpreted in terms of the cationic atmosphere effect facilitating the primary electron transfer process from LCV to BP*3.In the course of investigating photochemical and photophysical behaviors of molecular aggregates in which benzophenone(BP) molecules are chemically bound, we found that BP derivatives having quarternary ammonium ion(II, III, IV, and V) revealed very much enhanced photosensitivity towards photooxidation of Leuco Crystal Violet(LCV) in acetonitrile2.When dry acetonitrile solution containing LCV(10-4M) and BP derivative(10-3M) is irradiated with a Xenon lamp in the wavelength region between 340 and 420nm, the BP derivative is selectively profile are shown in Figure 1.These differences in reactivity are obviously not attributable to absorption differences of Ordinary substituent effects on aromatic compounds could not explain the results as well, since inductive effect by ammonium ion remotely attached to BP(V) is hardly conceivable. Another approach to interprete the results on the basis of molecular aggregate formation(micellar effect) seems to be not appropriate3. Although molecular association of surfactant molecules in both polar and non-polar organic solvents has been demonstrated4,5, comparable reactivities of IIb and III indicate that surfactant properties of sensitizers are not of importance. A remaining possibility is neutral salt effect. By adding a variety of neutral salts to I, the rate of CV+ formation increases as shown in Figure 2. This positive salt effect is not limited to tetraalkylammonium salts. Lithium chloride is equally effective. Apparently, heavy atom effect is responsible for the negative salt effect of iodide6. The finding that the reactivities of IIb, III, and IV are much higher than that of V while reactivities of I and p-methoxybenzophenone are almost identical suggests that the distance between