ENERGY BARRIERS FOR EXOTHERMIC ION/RADICAL RECOMBINATIONS.

Unimolecular dissociations of molecules into pairs of radicals generally proceed such that the reverse exothermic radical/radical recombination does not require an activation energy. Similarly, the exothermic recombination of an ion and a free radical proceeds with zero or a very small activation energy: direct bond cleavage reactions are therefore often used to derive ionic heats of formation. We have generated in the gas phase 8 …