Comparison of the predictive performance of the Bell–Evans, Taylor-expansion and statistical-mechanics models of mechanochemistry

We analyse the capacity of several models to extrapolate the activation free energies of isomerization of cyclobutene and dibromocyclopropane in a stretched polymer from strain-free parameters of the reactive site and short polymer segments. Comparison with results obtained from quantum-chemical calculations of complete conformational ensembles coupled to a stretching force reveal that the simplest model yields qualitatively accurate results at minimal computational expense.