Energy profile (chemistry)

For a chemical reaction or process an energy profile (or reaction coordinate diagram) is a theoretical representation of a single energetic pathway, along the reaction coordinate, as the reactants are transformed into products. Reaction coordinate diagrams are derived from the corresponding potential energy surface (PES), which are used in computational chemistry to model chemical reactions by relating the energy of a molecule(s) to its structure (within the Born–Oppenheimer approximation). The reaction coordinate is a parametric curve that follows the pathway of a reaction and indicates the progress of a reaction.