Posts Tagged ‘lower energy saddle point’

The “unexpected” mechanism of peroxide decomposition.

Sunday, November 18th, 2012

A game chemists often play is to guess the mechanism for any given reaction. I thought I would give it a go for the decomposition of the tris-peroxide shown below. This reaction is known to (rapidly, very rapidly) result in the production of three molecules of propanone, one of ozone and a lot of entropy (but not heat).[cite]10.1021/ja0464903[/cite]

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