General Radical Reactions

Atkinson (1994) presents a correlation that allows one to determine the relative importance of 02 reaction and decomposition for a particular alkoxy radical. Generally, reaction with 02 is the preferred path for primary alkoxy radicals that have C-atom chains of two or fewer C atoms in length attached to the carbonyl group. 

A general reaction scheme for CIDNP is shown in llgnre B1.16.4B. where the radical dynamics in each region... 

Carbon-centered radicals generally react very rapidly with oxygen to generate peroxy radicals (eq. 2). The peroxy radicals can abstract hydrogen from a hydrocarbon molecule to yield a hydroperoxide and a new radical (eq. 3). This new radical can participate in reaction 2 and continue the chain. Reactions 2 and 3 are the propagation steps. Except under oxygen starved conditions, reaction 3 is rate limiting. 

Polyethylene (PE) is a genetic name for a large family of semicrystalline polymers used mostiy as commodity plastics. PE resins are linear polymers with ethylene molecules as the main building block they are produced either in radical polymerization reactions at high pressures or in catalytic polymerization reactions. Most PE molecules contain branches in thek chains. In very general terms, PE stmcture can be represented by the following formula ... 

The photopolymerization process taking place within a representative mixture of sensitizer, initiator, chain-transfer agent, and monomer, typical of positive Cromalin, has been studied in detail (41,42). The exact mechanism is still controversial, but a generalized reaction scheme can be postulated as follows, where L2 = biimidazole dimer, S = sensitizer, RH = chain-transfer agent, L2 = excited biimidazole dimer, L = biimidazole radical,... 

Ethylene Dichloride Pyrolysis to Vinyl Chloride. Thermal pyrolysis or cracking of EDC to vinyl chloride and HCl occurs as a homogenous, first-order, free-radical chain reaction. The accepted general mechanism involves the four steps shown in equations 10—13 ... 

Thermal chlorination of ethane is generally carried out at 250—500°C. At ca 400°C, a free-radical chain reaction takes place ... 

A free-radical reaction is a chemical process which involves molecules having unpaired electrons. The radical species could be a starting compound or a product, but the most common cases are reactions that involve radicals as intermediates. Most of the reactions discussed to this point have been heterolytic processes involving polar intermediates and/or transition states in which all electrons remained paired throughout the course of the reaction. In radical reactions, homolytic bond cleavages occur. The generalized reactions shown below illustrate the formation of alkyl, vinyl, and aryl free radicals by hypothetical homolytic processes. 

Atom or radical transfer reactions generally proceed by a SH2 mechanism (substitution, homolytie, bimolecular) that can be depicted as shown in Figure 1.6. This area has been the subject of a number of reviews.1 3 27 97 99 The present discussion is limited, in the main, to hydrogen atom abstraction from aliphatic substrates and the factors which influence rate and specificity of this reaction. 

Reactions between carbon-centered radicals generally give a mixture of disproportionation and combination. Much effort has been put into establishing the relative importance of these processes. The ratio of disproportionation to combination (kt /k]t ) is dependent on the structural features of the radicals involved and generally shows only minor variation with solvent, pressure, temperature, etc. 

Cyanoisopropyl radicals generally show a high degree of specificity in reactions with unsaturated substrates. They react with most monomers (c.g. S, MMA) exclusively by tail addition (Scheme 3.4). However, Bcvington et al.11 indicated that cyanoisopropyl radicals give ca 10% head addition with VAc at 60 °C and that the proportion of head addition increases with increasing temperature. 

The chemistry of atkoxycarbonyloxy radicals in many ways parallels that of the aroyloxy radicals (e.g. benzoyloxy, see 3.4.2.2.1). Products attributable to the reactions of alkoxy radicals generally arc not observed. This indicates that the rate of p-scission is slow relative to the rate of addition to monomers or other... 

The polymerizations (a) and (b) owe their success to what has become known as the persistent radical effect."1 Simply stated when a transient radical and a persistent radical are simultaneously generated, the cross reaction between the transient and persistent radicals will be favored over self-reaction of the transient radical. Self-reaction of the transient radicals leads to a build up in the concentration of the persistent species w hich favors cross termination with the persistent radical over homotermination. The hoinolermination reaction is thus self-suppressing. The effect can be generalized to a persistent species effect to embrace ATRP and other mechanisms mentioned in Sections 9.3 and 9.4. Many aspects of the kinetics of the processes discussed under (a) and (b) are similar,21 the difference being that (b) involves a bimolecular activation process. 

The values of both E and 4 are likely to be very near to zero, since they are very fast radical recombination reactions known in general to require little activation. Thus, recalling that AE = A- AnRT for gas phase reactions, we may write j ] = (345-7) = 169 kJ mol"1. Equation (8-19) then gives 2 = 32 kJ mol"1. The value of 2 has been measured directly4 and is 31.4 kJ mol"1. 

The reaction given here has been described before as a general reaction,2 and there can be a wide variety of alkyl, aryl, and halo substituents on the diene and phosphorus. Dibromophosphines are appreciably more reactive than dichlorophosphincs. If a free-radical catalyst is used instead of an inhibitor, the copolymers can be made in good yield.3 The 1,4-addition of dichloro-phosphines to 1,3-dienes is of theoretical interest because of its analogy to the well-known 1,4-addition of sulfur dioxide to 1,3-dienes. 

R8 is the simplest of a large suite of peroxyl radical combination reactions, generalized as R02 + H02 and R02 + R02 that generate poorly characterized radical and non-radical reaction products. Such reactions are of greatest significance in air with low nitric oxide concentration where the R02 species can reach elevated concentrations (95). The dependence of [H02 ] upon the tropospheric NO concentration is discussed below. 

In this chapter, we discuss free-radical substitution reactions. Free-radical additions to unsaturated compounds and rearrangements are discussed in Chapters 15 and 18, respectively. In addition, many of the oxidation-reduction reactions considered in Chapter 19 involve free-radical mechanisms. Several important types of free-radical reactions do not usually lead to reasonable yields of pure products and are not generally treated in this book. Among these are polymerizations and high-temperature pyrolyses. 

A general reaction mechanism for the grafting of MA onto EPM is given in Figure 13.3 [15,16]. Free-radical grafting of MA starts with the decomposition of the radical initiator, usually a peroxide [15,18]. The peroxide decomposes at elevated temperamres into the corresponding oxy radicals, which may further degrade to alkyl radicals and ketones. These oxy and alkyl radicals abstract... 

This is caused by the effect of air on an ether. This is classed as a radical reaction as the effects of light, heat and radical sources demonstrate. The general reaction can be written ... 

This generalized reaction sequence consumes the halide, the stannane, and the reactant X=Y, and effects addition to the organic radical and a hydrogen atom to the X=Y bond. The order of reactivity of organic halides toward stannyl radicals is iodides > bromides > chlorides. 

Among the most useful radical fragmentation reactions from a synthetic point of view are decarboxylations and fragmentations of alkoxyl radicals. The use of (V-hydroxy-2-thiopyridine esters for decarboxylation is quite general. Several procedures and reagents are available for preparation of the esters,353 and the reaction conditions are compatible with many functional groups.354 f-Butyl mercaptan and thiophenol can serve as hydrogen atom donors. 

FIGURE 6.3 Resonance forms and general reactions of chromanoxyl radical 2. 

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