The Investigation of Organic Reactions and Their Mechanisms

A range of alternative mechanisms can usually be postulated formost organic chemical reactions, and identification of the mostlikely requires detailed investigation. Investigation of OrganicReactions and their Mechanisms will serve as a guide for thetrained chemist who needs to characterise an organic chemicalreaction and investigate its mechanism, but who is not an expert inphysical organic chemistry.
Such an investigation will lead to an understanding of whichbonds are broken, which are made, and the order in which theseprocesses happen. This information and knowledge of the associatedkinetic and thermodynamic parameters are central to the developmentof safe, efficient, and profitable industrial chemical processes,and to extending the synthetic utility of new chemical reactions inchemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing, and academicenvironments.
Written as a coherent account of the principal methods currentlyused in mechanistic investigations, at a level accessible toacademic researchers and graduate chemists in industry, the book ishighly practical in approach. The contributing authors, aninternational group of expert practitioners of the techniquescovered, illustrate their contributions by examples from their ownresearch and from the relevant wider chemical literature. The bookcovers basic aspects such as product analysis, kinetics, catalysis,and investigation of reactive intermediates. It also includesmaterial on significant recent developments, e.g. computationalchemistry, calorimetry, and electrochemistry, in addition to topicsof high current industrial relevance, e.g. reactions in multiphasesystems, and synthetically useful reactions involving free radicalsand catalysis by organometallic compounds.