Volume profile thermal substitution reactions

The typical results reported in this chapter, clearly demonstrate how the lifetime of excited states and the low-spin/high-spin character of such states can be tuned by pressure. Furthermore, photochemical bond formation and cleavage processes are accelerated or decelerated by pressure, respectively, in a similar way as found for the corresponding thermal reactions. As a result of this, the associative or dissociative nature of such substitution reactions can be characterized. A further characterization of the intimate nature of the reaction mechanism can also be obtained for photochemical isomerization and electron-transfer reactions as reported in Sections V and VI, respectively. The same applies to photoinduced thermal reactions, where the interpretation of the pressure dependence is not complicated by photophysical relaxation processes. The results for the subsequent thermal reactions can be compared with a wealth of information available for such processes [1-6]. Especially the construction of reaction volume profiles has turned out to be a powerful tool in the elucidation of such reaction mechanisms. 

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