Radical halogenation of an alkane
A halogen radical takes a hydrogen and the alkyl radical takes a halogen. The hydrogen removed is the one whose radical is easiest to make — tertiary before secondary before primary.
What it needs, and what it gives
- Reaction class
- Radical substitution
- Light or heat to start the chain. With a double bond present the halogen adds across it instead, and with an aromatic ring it goes onto the ring.
- not stated
- Mechanism
- none written
- Halogens are corrosive and the reaction is exothermic once started.
These notes are flags, not a risk assessment. Read the primary source and your own institution's rules before working at the bench.
How it is thought to happen
The transformation is applied and tested, but no canonical pathway has been written for it yet. Rather than generate a plausible-looking set of arrows, the platform offers nothing here. What it does claim — which bonds change — is read from the transformation itself and does not depend on a mechanism.
Try it on your own structures
Enter your reactants in the Reaction Lab. If this transformation matches what you drew, it is applied and the outcome is shown next to the records that back it — with the count of documented reactions doing the same thing on substrates like yours, rather than a confidence score.