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In the Arrhenius model of reaction rates, activation energy is the minimum amount of energy that must be available to reactants for a chemical reaction to occur. [1] The activation energy ( E a ) of a reaction is measured in kilojoules per mole (kJ/mol) or kilocalories per mole (kcal/mol). [ 2 ]
The energy of activation [1] specifies the amount of free energy the reactants must possess (in addition to their rest energy) in order to initiate their conversion into corresponding products—that is, in order to reach the transition state for the reaction. The energy needed for activation can be quite small, and often it is provided by the ...
The activation energy is the minimum amount of energy to initiate a chemical reaction and form the activated complex. [6] The energy serves as a threshold that reactant molecules must surpass to overcome the energy barrier and transition into the activated complex.
The free energy of activation, ΔG ‡, is defined in transition state theory to be the energy such that ‡ = ‡ ′ holds. The parameters ΔH ‡ and ΔS ‡ can then be inferred by determining ΔG ‡ = ΔH ‡ – TΔS ‡ at different temperatures.
The general form of the Eyring–Polanyi equation somewhat resembles the Arrhenius equation: = ‡ where is the rate constant, ‡ is the Gibbs energy of activation, is the transmission coefficient, is the Boltzmann constant, is the temperature, and is the Planck constant.
The activation energy is often predicted using the transition state theory. Increasing the concentration of the reactant brings about more collisions and hence more successful collisions. Increasing the temperature increases the average kinetic energy of the molecules in a solution, increasing the number of collisions that have enough energy.
The conditions of the reaction, such as temperature, pressure, or solvent, affect which reaction pathway may be favored: either the kinetically controlled or the thermodynamically controlled one. Note this is only true if the activation energy of the two pathways differ, with one pathway having a lower E a (energy of activation) than the other.
For any reaction to proceed, the starting material must have enough energy to cross over an energy barrier. This energy barrier is known as activation energy (∆G ≠) and the rate of reaction is dependent on the height of this barrier. A low energy barrier corresponds to a fast reaction and high energy barrier corresponds to a slow reaction.