Recently, DICP scientists Prof. Xueming Yang (Member of CAS), Prof. Donghui Zhang, together with Prof. Timothy Minton, CAS Outstanding Visiting Scholar working in DICP, have been invited to write a “Perspective Review” for the Science journal. The title of the article was “Thinking Afresh on High Energy Chemical Reactions”, which was published in Science on 29 June, 2012 (Science 336，1650 (2012).

In this review, the authors first introduced the research results of Prof. Richard Zare and co-workers of the Stanford University on the reaction of H+D2 under high energy collision, which appeared on the same issue of the Science journal. Then the DICP scientists pointed out that the peculiar variation phenomenon in angle distribution observed by Prof. Zare and co-workers was due to the restrain of the high angular momentum reaction by the high centrifugal potential under high energy collision. Moreover, the authors also introduced systematically their studies in recent years on new mechanisms of high energy collision reactions, such as O+CH4, O+HCl and H+CD4, and emphasized that the peculiar reaction mechanisms in high energy collision reactions generally differ greatly from those of low energy collision reactions that proceed along minimum energy paths.

It is anticipated that this perspective article is of significance in pushing forward the research in kinetics and mechanisms of high energy chemical reactions.