Unimolecular reaction rates lifetime distribution

Information of a different sort is obtained in a molecular beam experiment, although the means for producing the species undergoing unimolecular decomposition is also chemical activation. Whereas the conventional kinetic studies yield reaction rates for direct comparison with RRKM lifetimes, the beam technique yields product recoil energy distribution which, in principle, contain information regarding exit channel dynamics specifically ignored in RRKM. Comparison of experimental results with RRKM theory is indirect, requiring additional assumptions whose validity must be determined. Fortunately, however, statistical theories of a different sort exist which base their predictions on asymptotic (and therefore measureable) properties of the... 

The plots in Fig. 3 clearly show that the initial dissociation rates are strongly affected by the excitation process. Putting energy near the reaction site promotes unimolecular reaction, while the opposite is observed if the energy is put at a site that is removed from the reaction site. However, analyses of the lifetime distributions show that by 10 s the decomposition probabilities have become statistical. Since the average RRKM lifetime for H-CEC-Cl is greater than... 

The lifetimes of the BRs are of critical importance to any attempt at quantitative analysis of the factors which will determine quantum yields and product distributions (E/C and t/c ratios) in Type II reactions of ketones under various reaction conditions. Virtually all information about lifetimes is derived from study of triplet BRs and much of it has been provided, and reviewed, by Scaiano [261]. There are many interesting reactions, both bimolecular and unimolecular, which occur at only one of the radical centers but they have little relevance to this chapter and are not discussed here. BR triplets derived from alkanophenones have lifetimes of 25-50 ns in hydrocarbon solvents. They are lengthened several fold in t-butyl alcohol and other Lewis bases capable of hydrogen bonding to the OH groups of the BRs. The rates of decay are virtually temperature independent but are shortened by paramagnetic cosolutes such as 02 or NO. The quenchers react with the BRs... 

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