Flash Vacuum Pyrolysis: Principles, Instrumentation, and Applications

Flash vacuum pyrolysis (FVP) has been recognized as an important technique for investigating the thermochemistry of molecules. Using this technique, a range of chemical processes such as simple bond cleavage, elimination of small molecules, pericyclic reactions, isomerization, and rearrangement reactions can be studied by varying temperatures. Several thermal products can be isolated at a preparative scale using cold trapping. Moreover, FVP, combined with matrix isolation, has been widely used to generate reactive intermediates and unstable species. Thus, FVP has a lot of significance in mechanistic investigations in organic chemistry and is relevant in petrochemistry. In this article, the principle, instrumentation, and applications of FVP are discussed.