For many years, it was assumed that the fragments of a gas phase dissociation simply fly apart. In 1958, Allan Maccoll suggested that the decomposition of
however, he had provided the germ of an idea that came to fruition two decades later in the study of decompositions of electrically charged molecules.
In the late 1970s three research groups—in England,
molecular rearrangements at the same time as it rotates relative to the neutral partner, Y. Similarly, the neutral partner, Y, can also rotate relative to the charged partner, as well as having the ability to exchange Hydrogens
and internal energy with it.
More recently several research groups have provided evidence that revives Maccoll's original hypothesis, but with the variation that the fragments that sojourn in the presence of one another are both electrically uncharged.
radical pairs [R· X·], where X· can be as small as a hydrogen atom. In the gas phase such intermediates are often called roaming radicals. [8]
Sources
^Advances in Gas Phase Ion Chemistry, Volume 4 by L.M. Babcock, N.G. Adams 2001
