Orbitals, molecular xylylenes

A particularly useful property of the PX monomer is its enthalpy of formation. Conventional means of obtaining this value, such as through its heat of combustion, are, of course, excluded by its reactivity. An experimental attempt was made to obtain this measure of chemical reactivity with the help of ion cyclotron resonance a value of 209 17 kJ/mol (50 4 kcal/mol) was obtained (10). Unfortunately, the technique suffers from lack of resolution in addition to experimental imprecision. It is perhaps better to rely on molecular orbital calculations for the formation enthalpy. Using a semiempirical molecular orbital technique, which is tuned to give good values for heat of formation on experimentally accessible compounds, the heat of formation of /5-xylylene has been computed to be 234.8 kj/mol (56.1 kcal/mol) (11). 

A particularly useful property of the PX monomer is its enthalpy of formation. Using a scmicmpirical molecular orbital technique, the heat of formation of p-xylylene has been computed to be 234.8 kJ/mol (56.1 keal/mol). 

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