What's new in stable radical chemistry?

Abstract

Many kinds of radicals are stable enough to isolate, handle, and store without any special precautions. The diversity in molecular architectures of these stable radicals is sufficiently large that the common factors governing radical stability/persistence, geometric and electronic structure, association/dimerization preferences, and reactivity have generally not been well articulated or appreciated. This review provides a survey of the major classes of stable or persistent organic/organomain group radicals with a view to presenting a unified description of the interdependencies between radical molecular structure and properties.