Theory and simulation of chemical relaxation spectra.

Abstract

Chemical relaxation methods proved to be important tools for the study of kinetics in solution and are widely used for the investigation of inorganic, organic, and biochemical reaction mechanisms, and the characterization of their elementary steps. The principle of these methods is that the reaction is initiated by a small perturbation of an external thermodynamic parameter. The response of the system after the external perturbation, i.e., the time course of the concentration changes of the reacting species, is measured by suitable physical parameters. It is the essential advantage of the relaxation methods (temperature-jump, pressurejump, electric-field-jump, ultrasound and dielectric dispersion methods) that the reactions can be followed into the micro- and nanosecond time range, an essential requirement for the stiidy of elementary reaction steps. Methods and theory of chemical relaxation have been extensively discussed in literature. It is the aim of this chapter to summarize the theoretical approach and to provide a computer program for the simulation of relaxation kinetic progress curves.KeywordsRelaxation TimeReaction StepNormal ReactionRelaxation CurveRelaxation SpectrumThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.