Rl. Donkers et al., Kinetics of the reduction of dialkyl peroxides. New insights into the dynamics of dissociative electron transfer, J AM CHEM S, 121(31), 1999, pp. 7239-7248
The concerted dissociative reduction of di-tert-butyl peroxide (DTBP), dicu
myl peroxide (DCP), and di-n-butyl peroxide (DNBP) is evaluated by both het
erogeneous and homogeneous electron transfer using electrochemical methods.
Electrochemical and thermochemical determination of the O-O bond energies
and the standard potentials of the alkoxyl radicals allow the standard pote
ntials for dissociative reduction of the three peroxides in N,N-dimethylfor
mamide and acetonitrile to be evaluated. These values allowed the kinetics
of homogeneous ET reduction of DTBP and DCP by a variety of radical anion d
onors to be evaluated as a function of overall driving force. Comparison of
the heterogeneous ET kinetics of DTBP and DNBP as a function of driving fo
rce for ET allowed the distance dependence on the reduction kinetics of the
former to be estimated. Results indicate that the kinetics of ET to DTBP i
s some 0.8 order of magnitude slower in reactivity than DNBP because of a s
teric effect imposed by the bulky tert-butyl groups. Experimental activatio
n parameters were measured for the homogeneous reduction of DTBP with five
mediators, covering a range of 0.4 eV in driving force over the temperature
range -30 to 50 OC in DMF. The temperature dependence of the kinetics lead
s to unusually low preexponential factors for this series. The low preexpon
ential factor is interpreted in terms of a nonadiabatic effect resulting fr
om weak electronic coupling between the reactant and product surfaces. Fina
lly, the data are discussed in the context of recent advances of dissociati
ve electron transfer reported by Saveant and by German and Kuznestov. In to
tal the results suggest that these peroxides undergo a nonadiabatic dissoci
ative electron transfer and represent the first reported class of compounds
where this effect is reported.