POTERYKO. Can. J. Chem. 66, 2410 (1988. The dissociation constant of deuterium peroxide has been determined from measurements of the pH of mixtures of D202/NaOD in D20. At 2S°C, pK, = 12.35 (S), confirming the value previously deduced from a kinetic study of the reactions of muonium with H202 and Dz02. The enthalpy and entropy of dissociation of D20z are estimated to be 34.7 (8.8) kl mol-I and -120 (30) J K-', respectively. We have recently completed an extensive study of the kinetics of the reactions Mu + H202 and Mu + D202 in aqueous solution. Muonium (Mu) is the exotic atomic system p+e-, and behaves as a light radioactive isotope of H (see ref. 1 for a general introduction and references to the literature of Mu chemistry and the pSR technique). Muonium decay rates were measured for various conditions of peroxide concentration (0 to 3 mM), acidity of the medium (pH 3 to pH 12.4 for H202, pD 3 to pD 13.7 for D202) and temperature (0 to 50°C). A preliminary account and most of the data are to be found in a conference report (2). Full experimental details and interpretation of the results in terms of mechanism and isotope effects will be reported in a full publication elsewhere. This short note is intended to highlight a "spin-off" of the kinetics study, namely, the determination of the ionisation constant of D202, and to report an independent determination by more conventional means.
JEAN-CLAUDE BRODOVITCHThe H202 data are consistent with the following reaction scheme:Mu + OH--products For such a scheme, the first order decay rate for the disappearance of Mu is given by (1): where [H2O2It = [H202] + [H02-] is the nominal peroxide concentration, and A. is the decay rate measured for pure water. A similar reaction scheme and an analogous expression to [6] was assumed for the Mu + D202 system. The purpose of the kinetics study was to determine k, and k2 and their equivalents in the D202 scheme. They may be obtained by fitting [6] to the experimental data, using kl , k2, and k3 as adjustable parameters. In the case of the H202 system we used literature values of K, (3). However, we were unable to find any reported values for the corresponding dissociation constant of D202. Therefore, we used the kinetic data to determine K, by performing a fit to expression [6] with K, as an extra adjustable parameter.By processing the D202 data in this manner we have determined K, to be 6.8(6) x 10-l3 M (pK, = 12.2(2)) at 25°C. (For H202 pK, = 11.66 at this temperature (4).) However, to obtain meaningful fits some constraints had to be imposed on K, during the calculations. Specifically, the variation of pK, with temperature was required to be equal for H202 and D202, in similar fashion to the temperature dependence of pK, for H 2 0 and D20. In terms of the activation parameters for the dissociation of D202, this is equivalent to imposing the same AH" value as that of H202 while leaving AS' a free parameter. The pK, value found for D202 is larger than that of H202, which seems reasonable given the relative dissociation constan...