Electrophilic Aromatic Nitration in the Gas Phase

Article abstract of DOI:10.1021/ja00251a006

Aromatic nitration by MeO⁺(H)NO2, in essence nitronium ion solvated by one methanol molecule, has been studied in the gas phase by using an integrated approach, based on the coordinate application of ICR, Cl, and CID mass spetrometric methods with a highly complementary radiolytic technique.The latter can be used in gases at atmospheric pressure and allows direct evaluation of key mechanistic features, in particular of substrate and positional selectivity.The results resolve early discrepancies between gas-phase and liquid-phase studies, characterizing the reaction as a typical, well-behaved electrophilic substitution of moderate selectivity.The date from the gas-phase nitration of ten monosubstituted benzenes fit a Hammett's type linear plot, characterized by a ρ value of -3.87.The correlation does not extend to highly activated substrates, such as anisole and mesitylene, since the nitration rate tends to a limiting value that cannot be increased by further enhancing the activation of the substrate, exactly as in "encounter-rate" nitrations occurring in solution.The mechanism and the energetics of the gas-phase nitration have been investigated, and the relative stability of the charged intermediates involved, in particular of the isomeric protonated nitrobenzenes, has been estimated by theoretical approaches at two different levels, using STO-3G minimal basis and 4-31G split-valence basis sets.