Tunnelling control of chemical reactions – the organic chemist’s perspective

Ley, D.; Gerbig, D.; Schreiner, P. R. Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012, 10, 3781 (Paywall)
Contributed by Steven Bachrach.
Reposted from Computational Organic Chemistry with permission

Schreiner has written a very nice review of the role of tunneling in organic chemistry.¹ This includes tunneling in the conformations of carboxylic acids and in hydrogen abstractions. But the major emphasis is on his own group’s contributions regarding tunneling on a variety of hydroxycarbenes (see these posts: cyclopropylhydroxycarbene, methylhydroxycarbene, phenylhydroxycarbene, dihydroxycarbene, and hydroxymethylene). This led to the development of a third means for controlling reactions: not just kinetic and thermodynamic control, but tunneling control as well.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in learning how quantum mechanical tunneling can have very real-world chemical consequences.

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