The experimental manifestations of corner-cutting tunneling

A family of potential energy surfaces has recently been developed, based on a linear, 3-body model, which permits the calculation of rate constants that accurately mimic a large body of data for hydride transfer reactions in solution. Two of the parameters of the symmetrical surface have now been systematically varied so as to alter the importance of hydrogen tunneling, and the effects on measurable parameters have been examined. On all reasonable variants of the surface, at temperatures ∼300 K, most hydride transfer events occur by tunneling, and tunneling generally accounts for a large fraction of deuteride and tritide transfer events as well