In chemistry, chain propagation (sometimes just referred to as propagation) is a process in which a reactive intermediate is continuously regenerated during the course of a chemical chain reaction. For example, in the chlorination of methane, there is a two-step propagation cycle in which the chain carriers are a chlorine atom and a methyl radical which are regenerated alternately:

The two steps add to give the equation for the overall chain reaction:

Polymerization

In a chain-growth polymerization reaction, the reactive end-groups of a polymer chain react in each propagation step with a new monomer

External links

• IUPAC Gold Book definition: chain-propagating reaction

References