RELAXATION KINETICS IN GASEOUS LEWIS ACID/BASE SYSTEMS: THE PROTOTYPE, (CH3)2O+BF3

Article abstract of DOI:10.1016/0022-2860(90)80481-X

When a gaseous mixture of ether, boron trifluoride and their complex, at equilibrium (temperature range 290-335 K), is slightly perturbed by the imposition of a rapid temperature jump ca. 3 to 6 deg, the system relaxes to a new equilibrium.From the dependence of the measured relaxation time on the pressure of the reagents, the initial temperature and the pressure of a diluent gas (argon), we derived rate constants for the dissociation and association processes, based on published values of the equilibrium constant, K_eq(T).The temperature dependence of the dissociation rate constant leads to an activation energy (2nd order regime), for comparison with the O-B (donor-acceptor) bond dissociation energy.