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html International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Organic Chemistry Division Commission on Physical Organic Chemistry

GLOSSARY OF TERMS USED IN PHYSICAL ORGANIC CHEMISTRY

(IUPAC Recommendations 1994)
Prepared for publication by P. Mller Dpartement de Chimie Organique, Universit de Genve, CH-1211 Genve 4, Suisse Membership of the Working Party 1987-93: Chairman: P. Mller (Switzerland): Members: P. N. I. Ahlberg (Sweden), M. P. Doyle (USA), W. Drenth Netherlands), E. A. Halevi (Israel), R. A. Y. Jones (UK), J. M. McBride (USA), V. Minkin (USSR), M. Oki (Japan). Y. Takeuchi (Japan), J. R. Zdysiewicz (Australia). http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iupac/gtpoc/ World Wide Web version prepared by Gerard P. Moss Department of Chemistry, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK g.p.moss@qmul.ac.uk With the assistance of Charles L. Perrin (cperrin@ucsd.edu) The definitions used in this glossary are identical to those in the published document, see P. Mller, Pure Appl. Chem., 66, 1077-1184 (1994) [Copyright IUPAC; reproduced with the permission of IUPAC]. If you use any of these definitions please cite this reference as their source.

decomposition, chemical
The breakdown of a single entity (normal molecule, reaction intermediate, etc.) into two or more fragments.

oxidation
(1) The complete, net removal of one or more electrons from a molecular entity (also called "de-electronation"). (2) an increase in the oxidation number of any atom within any substrate (see HENDRICKSON, CRAM and HAMMOND (1970)). (3) Gain of oxygen and/or loss of hydrogen of an organic substrate. All oxidations meet criteria (1) and (2), and many meet criterion (3), but this is not always easy to demonstrate.Alternatively, an oxidation can be described as a transformation of an organic substrate that can be rationally dissected into steps or primitive changes. The latter consist in removal of one or several electrons from the substrate followed or preceded by gain or loss of water and/or hydrons or hydroxide ions, or by nucleophilic substitution by water or its reverse and/or by an intramolecular molecular rearrangement. This formal definition allows the original idea of oxidation (combination with oxygen), together with its extension to removal of hydrogen, as well as processes closely akin to this type of transformation (and generally regarded in current usage of the term in organic chemistry to be oxidations and to be effected by "oxidizing agents") to be descriptively related to definition (1). For example the oxidation of methane to chloromethane may be considered as follows: CH - 2e- - H+ + OH- = CH OH (oxidation)
4 3

CH Cl (reversal of hydrolysis)
3

pyrolysis
Thermolysis, usually associated with exposure to a high temperature.

thermolysis
The uncatalysed cleavage of one or more covalent bonds resulting from exposure of a compound to a raised temperature, or a process in which such cleavage is an essential part.