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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 needed for activation can be quite small, and often it is provided by the natural random thermal fluctuations of the molecules themselves (i.e. without any external sources of energy). The branch of chemistry that deals with this topic is called chemical kinetics .
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 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.
These so-called activation parameters give insight into the nature of a transition state, including energy content and degree of order, compared to the starting materials and has become a standard tool for elucidation of reaction mechanisms in physical organic chemistry. The free energy of activation, ΔG ‡, is defined in transition state ...
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.
Schematic potential energy diagram showing the effect of a catalyst in an endothermic chemical reaction. The presence of a catalyst opens a different reaction pathway (in red) with lower activation energy. The final result and the overall thermodynamics are the same.
In physical chemistry, the Evans–Polanyi principle (also referred to as the Bell–Evans–Polanyi principle, Brønsted–Evans–Polanyi principle, or Evans–Polanyi–Semenov principle) observes that the difference in activation energy between two reactions of the same family is proportional to the difference of their enthalpy of reaction.