Nucleophilic substitutions, aliphatic carbon

The C-X bond of alkyl halides and sulfonate esters is polarized such that the carbon has a positive dipole. Halides and sulfonate anions are good leaving groups. Nucleophiles attack primary and secondary alkyl halides, displacing the leaving group in what is known as aliphatic, bimolecular nucleophilic substitution, the Sn2 reaction. The 8 2 reaction follows second-order kinetics, has a transition state rather than an intermediate, and proceeds via back-side attack of the nucleophile on the halide and inversion of configuration. 

The reactions presented thus far are examples of nucleophilic aliphatic substitution reactions, in which a nucleophile substitutes for a leaving group at an aliphatic carbon. Nucleophilic aliphatic substitution proceeds with backside attack and inversion of configuration in a bimolecular process. In other words, the nucleophile collides with the electrophilic carbon atom to initiate the reaction. A shorthand symbol is used to describe this reaction Sjfl, where S means substitution, N means nucleophile, and 2 means bimolecular, or nucleophilic bimolecular substitution. Once a reaction is identified as Sn2, back-side... 

Nucleophilic aliphatic substitution (Chapter 8) Reaction m which a nucleophile replaces a leaving group usually a halide ion from sp hybridized carbon Nucleophilic aliphatic substitution may proceed by either an S l or an Sfj2 mechanism... 

Most of the kinetic measures of solvent effects have been developed for the study of nucleophilic substitution (Sn) at saturated carbon, solvolytic reactions in particular. It may, therefore, be helpful to give a brief review of aliphatic nucleophilic substitution. Two mechanistic routes have been clearly identified. One of these is shown by... 

In Part 2 of this book, we shall be directly concerned with organic reactions and their mechanisms. The reactions have been classified into 10 chapters, based primarily on reaction type substitutions, additions to multiple bonds, eliminations, rearrangements, and oxidation-reduction reactions. Five chapters are devoted to substitutions these are classified on the basis of mechanism as well as substrate. Chapters 10 and 13 include nucleophilic substitutions at aliphatic and aromatic substrates, respectively, Chapters 12 and 11 deal with electrophilic substitutions at aliphatic and aromatic substrates, respectively. All free-radical substitutions are discussed in Chapter 14. Additions to multiple bonds are classified not according to mechanism, but according to the type of multiple bond. Additions to carbon-carbon multiple bonds are dealt with in Chapter 15 additions to other multiple bonds in Chapter 16. One chapter is devoted to each of the three remaining reaction types Chapter 17, eliminations Chapter 18, rearrangements Chapter 19, oxidation-reduction reactions. This last chapter covers only those oxidation-reduction reactions that could not be conveniently treated in any of the other categories (except for oxidative eliminations). 

Several distinct mechanisms are possible for aliphatic nucleophilic substitution reactions, depending on the substrate, nucleophile, leaving group, and reaction conditions. In all of them, however, the attacking reagent carries the electron pair with it, so that the similarities are greater than the differences. Mechanisms that occur at a saturated carbon atom are considered first. By far the most common are the SnI and Sn2 mechanisms. 

In any heterolytic reaction in which a new carbon-carbon bond is formed one carbon atoms attacks as a nucleophile and the other as an electrophile. The classification of a given reaction as nucleophilic or electrophilic is a matter of convention and is usually based on analogy. Although not discussed in this chapter, 11-12-11-28 and 12-14-12-19 are nucleophilic substitutions with respect to one reactant, though, following convention, we classify them with respect to the other. Similarly, all the reactions in this section (10-93-10-123) would be called electrophilic substitution (aromatic or aliphatic) if we were to consider the reagent as the substrate. 

Moreover it has been shown that PV0CC1 prepared by free-radical polymerization of vinyl chloroformate (V0CC1) is an atactic polymer having a Bernouillian statistical distribution as expected (J[9). In order to extend our studies on the chemical modification of PV0CC1, the stereoselective character of the nucleophilic substitution of the chloroformate units with phenol has been examined by the study of the 13c-NMR spectra of partly modified polymers in the region of the aliphatic methine carbon atoms. The results obtained in this field are presented here. 

Many theories have been put forward to explain the mechanism of inversion. According to the accepted Hugles, Ingold theory aliphatic nucleophilic substitution reactions occur eigher by SN2 or SN1 mechanism. In the SN2 mechanism the backside attack reduces electrostatic repulsion in the transition state to a minimum when the leaving meleophile leaves the asymmetric carbon, naturally an inversion of configuration occurs at the central carbon atom. 

As in carboxylic esters it is possible to substitute alkoxy groups of Fischer-type carbene complexes by non-carbon nucleophiles, such as other alcohols [73,214,218], enols [219], aliphatic amines [43,64,66,220-224], aniline [79], imines [225], or pyrroles [226]. Strong nucleophiles can also lead to a dealkylation of methoxy-substituted carbene complexes (5 2 at the methyl group, [227]), in the same way as methyl esters can be cleaved by nucleophiles such as iodide. Carbon... 

Crossing the Borderline Between Sn1 and Sn2 Nucleophilic Substitution at Aliphatic Carbon... 

The essential features of the mechanism for aliphatic nucleophilic substitution at tertiary carbon were established in studies by Hughes and Ingold." ° However, as chemists probed more deeply, the problems associated with the characterization of borderline reaction mechanisms were encountered, and controversy remains to this day about whether these problems have been entirely solved." What is generally accepted is that ferf-butyl derivatives undergo borderline solvolysis reactions through a ferf-butyl carbocation intermediate that is too unstable to diffuse freely through nucleophilic solvents such as methanol and water. The borderline nature of substitution reactions at tertiary carbon is exemplihed by the following observations. 

There is an ongoing controversy about whether there is any stabilization of the transition state for nucleophilic substitution at tertiary aliphatic carbon from interaction with nucleophilic solvent." ° This controversy has developed with the increasing sophistication of experiments to characterize solvent effects on the rate constants for solvolysis reactions. Grunwald and Winstein determined rate constants for solvolysis of tert-butyl chloride in a wide variety of solvents and used these data to define the solvent ionizing parameter T (Eq. 3). They next found that rate constants for solvolysis of primary and secondary aliphatic carbon show a smaller sensitivity (m) to changes in Y than those for the parent solvolysis reaction of tert-butyl chloride (for which m = 1 by definition). A second term was added ( N) to account for the effect of changes in solvent nucleophilicity on obsd that result from transition state stabilization by a nucleophilic interaction between solvent and substrate. It was first assumed that there is no significant stabilization of the transition state for solvolysis of tert-butyl chloride from such a nucleophilic interaction. However, a close examination of extensive rate data revealed, in some cases, a correlation between rate constants for solvolysis of fert-butyl derivatives and solvent nucleophicity. " ... 

Nucleophilic Substitution at an Aliphatic Trigonal Carbon. The Tetrahedral Mechanism... 

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