Abstract
Most of the molecules react to form products by climbing a barrier. The energy involved in this climbing of the barrier is known as the activation energy of the reaction. Questions like how fast a reaction occurs can be answered by considering the height of the barrier. However, in some reactions, the reactants transform to products by directly tunnelling across the barrier instead of climbing over it. Such a purely quantum mechanical effect, which becomes more prominent for reactions at low temperatures can lead to interesting and even completely unexpected products. This effect and its consequences in representative examples are discussed.
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Sharmistha Karmakar is doing her PhD in the group of Ayan Datta, IACS, Kolkata. Her research interests are modelling molecules with strong optical absorbtion and emission properties.
Deepthi Jose is doing her PhD in the group of Ayan Datta since 2009 in IISER, Trivandrum. Her research interests are in supramolecular chemistry and low-dimensional periodic systems like graphene and silicenes.
Ayan Datta is at IACS, Kolkata. His research interests span across various aspects of theoretical chemistry, structure and reactivity of clusters and molecular materials.
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Karmakar, S., Jose, D. & Datta, A. Tunnelling effects in chemistry. Reson 19, 160–174 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-014-0019-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-014-0019-9