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Activation energy can be thought of as the magnitude of the potential barrier (sometimes called the energy barrier) separating minima of the potential energy surface pertaining to the initial and final thermodynamic state. For a chemical reaction to proceed at a reasonable rate, the temperature of the system should be high enough such that ...
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 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 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 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 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.
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.
The distinction is relevant when product A forms faster than product B because the activation energy for product A is lower than that for product B, yet product B is more stable. In such a case A is the kinetic product and is favoured under kinetic control and B is the thermodynamic product and is favoured under thermodynamic control.