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Elementary reaction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology defines elementary reaction[1] as "a reaction for which no reaction intermediates have been detected or need to be postulated in order to describe the chemical reaction on a molecular scale. An elementary reaction is assumed to occur in a single step and to pass through a single transition state".
Elementary reactions, as opposed to stepwise reactions, have a distinctive feature: stoichiometry (the numbers of particles in the reaction equation), molecularity (the actual number of molecules colliding) and reaction order must coincide necessarily. The reaction equation for elementary reactions coincides with the process taking place at the atomic level, i.e. n molecules of type A are colliding with m molecules of type B (n plus m is the molecularity).