Reactivity 3.3 – Electron sharing reactions

R3.3.1 – Radicals

📌 What is a radical?

Radicals are highly reactive chemical entities that have unpaired electrons
Radicals often react with other radicals to form covalent bonds or take electrons from other species as these processes are energetically favourable
Radicals tend to have short lifetimes as they are highly reactive

📌 Representing a radical

Radicals can be represented by a dot (as in a Lewis diagram) which represents unpaired electrons
Radicals can be any entity with unpaired electrons (ions, molecules, atoms etc)

Example

(Cl•) – chlorine radical

(NO•) – nitric oxide radical

(O₂^–•) – superoxide radical