In a heterolytic reaction, the unit that carries the electron pair (designated N) is nucleophilic; i.e., it seeks an atomic nucleus to combine with. Conversely, the other unit in the reaction (designated E) is electrophilic; it seeks to combine with a pair of electrons. An electrophilic reaction mechanism is one that involves an electrophilic reagent attacking a nucleophilic substrate. Because every such reaction involves both an electrophilic substance and a nucleophilic substance, it must be agreed arbitrarily which unit is the reagent and which the substrate. Often this agreement is made on the basis of molecular size, the larger-sized material being classed as the substrate.

In certain reactions in which movements of electrons are concerted and cyclic, it is not possible to identify any one reagent—or even any one particular atom or set of atoms in the molecule—as electrophilic or nucleophilic. Such processes are classified as electrocyclic.

Molecularity

The mechanism of an individual stage of a reaction can be described as unimolecular, bimolecular, and so on, according to the number of molecules necessarily concerned in covalency change in the transition state. As an extension of this classification, the number of molecules involved in the rate-limiting step of a several-stage reaction also can be used for classification of the overall reaction. Ambiguities and blurred distinctions arise when there are strong interactions between the solvent and the initial or transition state or when two stages of a reaction are so near in rate that they become jointly rate-determining. Nevertheless, classifications based on molecularity are widely used.

Intermolecularity and intramolecularity

The distinction between intermolecular and intramolecular processes is often useful. In intermolecular reactions, covalency changes take place in two separate molecules; in intramolecular reactions, two or more reaction sites within the same molecule are involved.

Nature of catalysis

Classification also can be made on the basis of the mode of catalytic action. In ester hydrolysis, as in the hydrolysis of ethyl acetate (see above The reactants), for example, distinction can be made between mechanisms in which catalysis is brought about by protons (hydrogen ions) or by acids in general, by hydroxide ion or by bases in general, or by enzymes.

Kinetic order

The kinetic order of a reaction is best considered as an experimental quantity related to (but not identical with) the number of molecules of any reactant involved in the transition state. It may for various reasons reveal only a part of what is happening in the rate-limiting transition state, one reason being that the concentrations of the components of the transition state may not all change with progress of the reaction. Establishing that a reaction is of the first order kinetically (that is, behaves as though only one molecule of the reactant is involved in the transition state) with respect to one of the components, for example, seldom reveals whether or not one or more molecules of solvent also is involved in the transition state. This is so because the solvent is present in such large amounts that its concentration does not change effectively with the course of the reaction. For this reason, the order with respect to an individual component may sometimes be useful for classification, but, for the overall reaction, molecularity is the more fundamental quantity.

Time sequence of events

The time sequence of events in a chemical reaction also provides a means of classification. In some mechanisms the bond-making and bond-breaking processes occur together and are said to be concerted; in others the individual stages are discrete, with recognizable intermediates occurring between them, and it may be necessary to specify not only that the mechanism is stepwise but also the order in which the steps occur.