PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Two distinct proton exchange reactions occur in metastable gaseous benzylbenzenium ions, generated by isobutane chemical ionization of diphenylmethane and four deuterium-labelled analogues. Whereas the proton ring-walk at the benzenium moiety is fast giving rise to a completely random intraannular proton exchange, the interannular proton exchange is surprisingly slow and competes with the elimination of benzene. A kinetic isotope effect of kH/kD= 5 has been determined for the interannular proton transfer, and a particularly high energy barrier of 50-75 kJ mol-1 has been estimated. These observations are attributed to steric restrictions of the ring-to-ring proton transfer in benzylbenzenium ions and contrasted to the fast interannular proton exchange in the higher homologues.