Can activation energy be negative?
1 Answer
Oct 16, 2017
Negative activation energy is often not possible and usually unheard of. For ordinary reactions, it is not seen. You almost never have zero activation energy either, unless your catalyst is phenomenal.
For a particularly niche scenario, one might see a reaction coordinate shaped like a potential well (say, due to two opposing, human-implemented electric fields in an ion-ion interaction) that slows down at higher temperatures. That means the reactants get higher in energy and are less affected by the electric fields, let's say.
A possibility like this is mentioned somewhat here.
Other than that, I can't think of a scenario where activation energy would be negative. It is positive-definite, 99% of the time.
