Mechanistic model for quantifying the effect of impact force on mechanochemical reactivity.

Conventional mechanochemical synthetic tools, such as ball mills, offer no methodology to quantitatively link macroscale reaction parameters, such as shaking frequency or milling ball radius, to fundamental drivers of reactivity, namely the force vectors applied to the reactive molecules. As a result, although mechanochemistry has proven to be a valuable method to make a wide variety of products, the results are seldom reproduceable between reactors, difficult to rationally optimize, and hard to ascribe to a specific reaction pathway. Here we have developed a controlled force reactor, which is a mechanochemical ball mill reactor with integrated force measurement and control during each impact.