New methods for the accurate determination of secondary deuterium KIEs

6 New methods for the accurate determination of secondary deuterium KIEs 

Secondary isotope effects are small. In fact, most of the secondary deuterium KIEs that have been reported are less than 20% and many of them are only a few per cent. In spite of the small size, the same techniques that are used for other kinetic measurements are usually satisfactory for measuring these KIEs. Both competitive methods where both isotopic compounds are present in the same reaction mixture (Westaway and Ali, 1979) and absolute rate measurements, i.e. the separate determination of the rate constant for the single isotopic species (Fang and Westaway, 1991), are employed (Parkin, 1991). Most competitive methods (Melander and Saunders, 1980e) utilize isotope ratio measurements based on mass spectrometry (Shine et al., 1984) or radioactivity measurements by liquid scintillation (Ando et al., 1984 Axelsson et al., 1991). However, some special methods, which are particularly useful for the accurate determination of secondary KIEs, have been developed. These newer methods, which are based on polarimetry, nmr spectroscopy, chromatographic isotopic separation and liquid scintillation, respectively, are described in this section. The accurate measurement of small heavy-atom KIEs is discussed in a recent review by Paneth (1992). 

METHODS BASED ON MEASURING OPTICAL ACTIVITY The isotopic quasi-racemate method (IQRM) 

This method is based on the polarimetric measurement of the optical activity induced by the KIE in a reaction mixture containing an isotopic quasiracemate, i.e. an approximately 50/50 mixture of the (+)-H and (-)-D substrate or vice versa, as one of the reactants. Variants of the method were independently reported by Bergson et al. (1977), Nadvi and Robinson (1978) and Tencer and Stein (1978). Later the method was successfully applied, particularly by Matsson and co-workers (Matsson, 1985 Hussenius etal., 1989 Hussenius and Matsson, 1990) to determine both primary and secondary KIEs in proton transfer reactions, and by Sinnott and co-workers (Bennet et al., 1985 Ashwell et al., 1992 Zhang et al., 1994) to determine both primary and secondary as well as heavy-atom KIEs for reactions of carbohydrate derivatives. 

The isotopic quasi-racemate or differential polarimetric method is a kinetic 

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