On the Advantages of Hydrocarbon Radical Stabilization Energies Based on R−H Bond Dissociation Energies

Abstract

Hydrocarbon radical stabilization energy (RSE) estimates based on the differences in R-H vs CH(3)-H bond dissociation energies have inherent advantages over RSEs based on R-CH(3) vs CH(3)-CH(3), as well as R-R vs CH(3)-CH(3) comparisons, since the R-CH(3) and R-R reference systems are prone to unbalanced contaminating intramolecular interactions involving the R groups. When the effects of steric crowding, branching, protobranching, conjugation, and hyperconjugation are taken into account, R-CH(3) and R-R based RSE values are nearly identical to R-H RSEs. Corrections for electronegativity differences between H and R are not needed to achieve agreement.