By Peter DaBell2021-04-07T13:21:00+01:00
Researchers in Israel investigating the reactivity of distonic radical ions have shown that through-space interactions have a far greater effect on reactivity than previously thought.
The team, led by Thijs Stuyver and Sason Shaik, from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, carried out a computational study on the H-abstraction reactivity of a set of distonic phenyl radicals. Distonic radical ions are a class of radical ions in which the charge and radical are formally separated by two or more atoms. In the radicals studied by Shaik and co-workers, the charged substituent is chemically inert and the radical is contained within the aromatic ring, at either the para-, meta- or ortho-position to the substituent.