Radical stabilization energies, localized

When considering the stability of spin-delocalized radicals the use of isodesmic reaction Eq. 1 presents one further problem, which can be illustrated using the 1-methyl allyl radical 24. The description of this radical through resonance structures 24a and 24b indicates that 24 may formally be considered to either be a methyl-substituted allyl radical or a methylvinyl-substituted methyl radical. While this discussion is rather pointless for a delocalized, resonance-stabilized radical such as 24, there are indeed two options for the localized closed shell reference compound. When selecting 1-butene (25) as the closed shell parent, C - H abstraction at the C3 position leads to 24 with a radical stabilization energy of - 91.3 kj/mol, while C - H abstraction from the Cl position of trans-2-butene (26) generates the same radical with a RSE value of - 79.5 kj/mol (Scheme 6). The difference between these two values (12 kj/mol) reflects nothing else but the stability difference of the two parents 25 and 26. 

The energy balance of photodissociation the importance of stabilization of the free radicals. When chlorobenzene or chloro-Np loses the halogen atom, a phenyl or a naphthyl radical is formed with the odd electron localized in an sp2 orbital which is orthogonal to the aromatic zr orbitals such a radical is not stabilized through resonance, unlike the benzyl- or the methyl-Np radicals for which several resonance structures can be drawn (Figure 4.32). 

The relative stability of the delocalized, non-vertical radical cation relative to a localized, vertical isomer was demonstrated also in gas phase experiments [404]. The molecular ions of m/e 132 obtained by gas phase ionization of the [4 + 2] dimer exhibited a bimodal decay, a result which was interpreted as evidence for the presence of two isomeric ions with different structures. The possibility that the reactive ion is a species with excess internal energy was discounted, when equivalent decay curves were observed in experiments using 10 eV and 70 eV electron impact ionization energy. In dramatic contrast, the molecular ions derived from the [2 + 2] dimer fail to react apparently the ion population resulting in this experiment is homogeneous [404],... 

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