| Abstract: | New concepts of the mechanism of acid-base catalysis are developed, incorporating electron transfer in low-lying electronic excited states of the reagent-catalysts complex. In base catalysis, the base-catalyst lowers the ionization potential of one of the reagents, the proton and electron dnor, and thereby lowers the energy of the excited level. Acid catalysis consists in intensifying the electron-accepting properties of the reagent acting as an electron acceptor.Published to initiate discussion.Institute of High-Molecular-Weight Compounds, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leningrad. Translated from Teoreticheskaya i Éksperimental'naya Khimiya, Vol. 27, No. 6, pp. 710–715, November–December, 1991. Original article submitted July 13, 1987. |
