Evolution of CH₃NO₂/Si interfacial chemistry under reaction conditions: a combined experimental and theoretical study

Kinetic Studies and Significance
In a chemical reaction, a relationship exists between the concentration of reactants and the rate at which the reaction proceeds. The study to measure this relationship is known as the kinetics of a chemical reaction. Kinetic studies are used to deduce the rate law of a chemical reaction, which provides information about the species involved during the transition state of the rate-determining step. Thus, kinetic studies help to derive the mechanism of a...

Kinetic studies of ionization of a tertiary halide in a protic solvent suggest that only the substrate participates in the rate-determining step (slow step). The nucleophile is involved only after the slowest step. The SN1 reaction takes place in a multiple-step mechanism. 
Firstly, the haloalkane ionizes to generate a carbocation intermediate and a halide ion. This heterolytic cleavage is highly endothermic with large activation energy. The ionization of the substrate, facilitated by a...

Historical perspective
In 1896, the German chemist Paul Walden discovered that he could interconvert pure enantiomeric (+) and (-) malic acids through a series of reactions. This conversion suggested the involvement of optical inversion during the substitution reaction. Further, in 1930, Sir Christopher Ingold described for the first time two different forms of nucleophilic substitution reactions, which are known as SN1 (nucleophilic substitution unimolecular) and SN2 (nucleophilic substitution...

An SN2 reaction of an alkyl halide is a single-step process in which bond formation between the nucleophile and the substrate and bond breaking between the substrate and the halide occurs simultaneously through a transition state without forming an intermediate.
When the nucleophile approaches the electrophilic carbon with its lone pairs, the halide acts as a leaving group and moves away with the electron-pair bonded to the carbon. Dotted partial bonds represent the bonds being formed or broken...

The kinetic studies of SN2 reactions suggest an essential feature of its mechanism: it is a single-step process without intermediates. Here, both the nucleophile and the substrate participate in the rate-determining step.
The presence of the more electronegative halogen in the substrate creates a polarized carbon-halide bond. The halide pulls the electron cloud generating an electrophilic center at the carbon atom. Thus, the carbon atom carries a partial positive charge while the halide has a...

In an SN2 reaction, the nucleophilic attack on the substrate and departure of the leaving group occurs simultaneously through a transition state. As the nucleophile approaches the substrate from the back-side, the configuration of the substrate carbon changes from tetrahedral to trigonal bipyramidal and then back to tetrahedral, leading to an inversion in the configuration of the product.
If the substrate is an achiral molecule at the α-carbon, the inversion of configuration is not...