Reactions that involve tunneling by carbon and the role that calculations have played in their study

Chemical reactions can proceed either by passage of the reactants over the reaction barrier or by tunneling through the barrier. During the past 40 years, it has become clear that tunneling, not only by hydrogen but also by carbon, can occur, provided that the reaction barrier is narrow and that tunneling occurs at energies that are not too far below the top of the barrier. This review discusses those reactions in which tunneling by carbon has been predicted to occur by calculations and/or been found to occur by experiments. WIREs Comput Mol Sci 2016, 6:20–46. doi: 10.1002/wcms.1235 This article is categorized under: Structure and Mechanism > Molecular Structures