This is a list of inorganic and organic reagents commonly used in chemistry.
Reagents are "substances or compounds that are added to a system in order to bring about a chemical reaction or are added to see if a reaction occurs." Some reagents are just a single element. However, most processes require reagents made of chemical compounds. Some of the most common ones used widely for specific reactive functions are listed below, but is by no means exhaustive.
| Name | General Description |
|---|---|
| Acetic acid | an organic acid; is one of the simplest carboxylic acids |
| Acetone | an organic compound; simplest example of the ketones |
| Acetylene | a hydrocarbon and the simplest alkyne; widely used as a fuel and chemical building block |
| Ammonia | inorganic; the precursor to most nitrogen-containing compounds; used to make fertilizer |
| Ammonium hydroxide | aqueous ammonia; used in traditional qualitative inorganic analysis |
| Azobisisobutyronitrile | organic compound; often used as a foamer in plastics and rubber and as a radical initiator |
| Baeyer's reagent | is an alkaline solution of potassium permanganate; used in organic chemistry as a qualitative test for the presence of unsaturation, such as double bonds; |
| N-Bromosuccinimide | used in radical substitution and electrophilic addition reactions in organic chemistry. Also acts as a mild oxidizer to oxidize benzylic or allylic alcohols. |
| Butanone (methyl ethyl ketone) | organic compound; similar solvent properties to acetone but has a significantly slower evaporation rate |
| Butylated hydroxytoluene | a fat-soluble organic compound that is primarily used as an antioxidant food additive |
| n-Butyllithium | an organolithium reagent; used as a polymerization initiator in the production of elastomers such as polybutadiene or styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) |
| Carbon disulfide | a non-polar solvent; used frequently as a building block in organic chemistry |
| Carbon tetrachloride | toxic, and its dissolving power is low; consequently, it has been largely superseded by deuterated solvents |
| Carbonyldiimidazole | often used for the coupling of amino acids for peptide synthesis and as a reagent in organic synthesis |
| Ceric ammonium nitrate | an inorganic compound; used as an oxidising agent in organic synthesis and as a standard oxidant in quantitative analysis |
| Chloridotris(triphenylphosphine) rhodium (I) | Coordination complex |
| Chloroform | organic compound; often used as CDCl3 (deuterated chloroform) as a solvent for NMR spectroscopy and as a general solvent. |
| Chromic acid | a strong and corrosive oxidising agent; an intermediate in chromium plating |
| Chromium trioxide | the acidic anhydride of chromic acid; mainly used in chrome-plating |
| Collins reagent | used to selectively oxidize primary alcohols to an aldehyde |
| Copper(I) iodide | useful in a variety of applications ranging from organic synthesis to cloud seeding |
| Dess–Martin periodinane | chemical reagent used to oxidize primary alcohols to aldehydes and secondary alcohols to ketones |
| Diborane | the central organic synthesis reagent for hydroboration |
| Dicyclohexylcarbodiimide | an organic compound; primary use is to couple amino acids during artificial peptide synthesis |
| Diethyl azodicarboxylate | a valuable reagent but also quite dangerous and explodes upon heating |
| Diethyl ether | organic compound; a common laboratory solvent |
| Dihydropyran | a heterocyclic compound; used as a protecting group for alcohols in organic synthesis. |