Posts Tagged ‘lower energy saddle point’

The “unexpected” mechanism of peroxide decomposition.

Sunday, November 18th, 2012

A game chemists often play is to guess the mechanism for any given reaction. I thought I would give it a go for the decomposition of the tris-peroxide shown below. This reaction is known to (rapidly, very rapidly) result in the production of three molecules of propanone, one of ozone and a lot of entropy (but not heat).[1]

(more…)

References

  1. F. Dubnikova, R. Kosloff, J. Almog, Y. Zeiri, R. Boese, H. Itzhaky, A. Alt, and E. Keinan, "Decomposition of Triacetone Triperoxide Is an Entropic Explosion", Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 127, pp. 1146-1159, 2005. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja0464903