SN2 reaction



The SN2 reaction is a type of reaction mechanism that is common in organic chemistry. In this mechanism, one bond is broken and one bond is formed synchronously, i.e., in one step. SN2 is a kind of nucleophilic substitution reaction mechanism. Since two reacting species are involved in the slow (rate-determining) step, this leads to the term substitution nucleophilic (bi-molecular) or SN2, the other major kind is SN1. Many other more specialized mechanisms describe substitution reactions.