Kinetic Solvent Effects in Organic Reactions

This article reviews prior work studying reaction kinetics in solution, with the goal of using this information to improve detailed kinetic modeling in the solvent phase. Both experimental and computational methods for calculating reaction rates in liquids are reviewed. Previous studies, which used such methods to determine solvent effects, are then analyzed based on reaction family. Many of these studies correlate kinetic solvent effect with one or more solvent parameters or properties of reacting species, but it is not always possible, and investigations are usually done on too few reactions and solvents to truly generalize. From these studies, we present suggestions on how best to use data to generalize solvent effects for many different reaction types in a high throughput manner.