378-16-5Relevant academic research and scientific papers
Hydrogen bonding lowers intrinsic nucleophilicity of solvated nucleophiles
Chen, Xin,Brauman, John I.
scheme or table, p. 15038 - 15046 (2009/03/12)
The relationship between nucleophilicity and the structure/environment of the nucleophile is of fundamental importance in organic chemistry. In this work, we have measured nucleophilicities of a series of substituted alkoxides in the gas phase. The functional group substitutions affect the nucleophiles through ion-dipole, ion-induced dipole interactions and through hydrogen bonding whenever structurally possible. This set of alkoxides serves as an ideal model system for studying nucleophiles under microsolvation settings. Marcus theory was applied to analyze the results. Using Marcus theory, we separate nucleophilicity into two independent components, an intrinsic nucleophilicity and a thermodynamic driving force determined solely by the overall reaction exothermicity. It is found that the apparent nucleophilicities of the substituted alkoxides are always much lower than those of the unsubstituted ones. However, ion-dipole, ion-induced dipole interactions, by themselves, do not significantly affect the intrinsic nucleophilicity; the decrease in the apparent nucleophilicity results from a weaker thermodynamic driving force. On the other hand, hydrogen bonding not only stabilizes the nucleophile but also increases the intrinsic barrier height by 3 to ～4 kcal mol-1. In this regard, the hydrogen bond is not acting as a perturbation in the sense of an external dipole but more directly affects the electronic structure and reactivity of the nucleophilic alkoxide. This finding offers a deeper insight into the solvation effect on nucleophilicity, such as the remarkably lower reactivities in nucleophilic substitution reactions in protic solvents than in aprotic solvents.
Gas-phase SN2 and E2 reactions of alkyl halides
DePuy, Charles H.,Gronert, Scott,Mullin, Amy,Bierbaum, Veronica M.
, p. 8650 - 8655 (2007/10/02)
Rate coefficients have been measured for the gas-phase reactions of methyl, ethyl, n-propyl, isopropyl, tert-butyl, and neopentyl chlorides and bromides with the following set of nucleophiles, listed in order of decreasing basicity: HO-, CH3O-, F-, HO- (H2O), CF3CH2O-, H2NS-, C2F5CH2O-, HS-, and Cl-. For methyl chloride the reaction efficiency first falls significantly below unity with HO- (H2O) as the nucleophile and for methyl bromide with HS- as the nucleophile; in both cases the overall reaction exothermicity is about 30 kcal mol-1. Earlier conclusions that these halides react slowly with stronger bases are shown to be in error. In the region where the rates are slow oxygen anions react with the alkyl chlorides and bromides by elimination while sulfur anions of the same basicity react by substitution. This difference is due to a slowing down of elimination with the sulfur bases; sulfur anions show no increased nucleophilicity as compared to oxy anions of the same basicity. Rate coefficients have also been measured for reaction of methyl fluoride with HO- and CH3O- and ethylene oxide with HO-, CH3O-, and F-. All of these rates are slow but measurable; combining the results of these experiments with those of the alkyl chlorides and bromides suggests that the gas-phase barrier to the symmetrical SN2 reaction of F- with methyl fluoride is lower than previous estimates. We have also measured rates for reaction of allyl chloride with F-, H2NS-, and HS-, chloromethyl ether with H2NS- and HS-, chloroacetonitrile with F-, H2NS-, HS-, and 37Cl-, bromoacetonitrile with Cl- and 81Br-, and α-chloroacetone with H2NS-, HS-, and 37Cl-. Our results also imply that the gas-phase SN2 barrier for Br- reacting with methyl bromide is nearly equal to the ion-dipole attraction energy of the reactants, in agreement with previous estimates.
