This grant from the Organic Dynamics Program supports the continuing research of Professor Vernon Parker at Utah State University. Primary objectives are experiments designed to determine factors that affect both the reactivity and thermodynamics of reactions in solution that involve organic radical ions and organic ions. Through the use of electochemical techniques reactions of radical cations of substituted alkylanthracenes with nucleophiles will be studied to determine fundamental thermodynamic parameters associated with steric effects on radical cations. Experiments are designed that will obtain data for carbon- and hydrogen-heteroatom bond dissociation energies in solution. Electrochemical methods will be used to measure accurately the strengths of chemical bonds in molecules for which experimental data is unavailable. These new results will allow the scientific community to compute with better accuracy the behavior of molecules by the use of fundamental thermodynamic equations.
