Disproportionation

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Disproportionation" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In chemistry, disproportionation, sometimes called dismutation, is a redox reaction in which one compound of intermediate oxidation state converts to two compounds, one of higher and one of lower oxidation states.^[1][2] The reverse of disproportionation, such as when a compound in an intermediate oxidation state is formed from precursors of lower and higher oxidation states, is called comproportionation, also known as synproportionation.

More generally, the term can be applied to any desymmetrizing reaction where two molecules of one type react to give one each of two different types:^[3]

${\displaystyle {\ce {2A -> A' + A''}}}$

This expanded definition is not limited to redox reactions, but also includes some molecular autoionization reactions, such as the self-ionization of water. In contrast, some authors use the term redistribution to refer to reactions of this type (in either direction) when only ligand exchange but no redox is involved and distinguish such processes from disproportionation and comproportionation.
For example, the Schlenk equilibrium

${\displaystyle {\ce {2 RMgX -> R2Mg + MgX2}}}$

is an example of a redistribution reaction.