Nucleophilic substitution alkyl iodides

Among alkyl halides alkyl iodides undergo nucleophilic substitution at the fastest rate alkyl fluorides the slowest... 

The order of alkyl halide reactivity in nucleophilic substitutions is the same as their order m eliminations Iodine has the weakest bond to carbon and iodide is the best leaving group Alkyl iodides are several times more reactive than alkyl bromides and from 50 to 100 times more reactive than alkyl chlorides Fluorine has the strongest bond to car bon and fluonde is the poorest leaving group Alkyl fluorides are rarely used as sub states m nucleophilic substitution because they are several thousand times less reactive than alkyl chlorides... 

We saw m Section 8 2 that the rate of nucleophilic substitution depends strongly on the leaving group—alkyl iodides are the most reactive alkyl fluorides the least In the next section we 11 see that the structure of the alkyl group can have an even greater effect... 

Because of its high reactivity toward nucleophilic substitution methyl iodide is the alkyl halide most often used to prepare quaternary ammonium salts... 

Acidic ether cleavages are typical nucleophilic substitution reactions, either SN1 or Sn2 depending on the structure of the substrate. Ethers with only primary and secondary alkyl groups react by an S 2 mechanism, in which or Br attacks the protonated ether at the less hindered site. This usually results in a selective cleavage into a single alcohol and a single alkyl halide. For example, ethyl isopropyl ether yields exclusively isopropyl alcohol and iodoethane on cleavage by HI because nucleophilic attack by iodide ion occurs at the less hindered primary site rather than at the more hindered secondary site. 

Microwave-assisted reactions allow rapid product generation in high yield under uniform conditions. Therefore, they should be ideally suited for parallel synthesis applications. The first example of parallel reactions carried out under microwave irradiation conditions involved the nucleophilic substitution of an alkyl iodide with 60 diverse piperidine or piperazine derivatives (Scheme 4.22) [76]. Reactions were carried out in a multimode microwave reactor in individual sealed polypropylene vials using acetonitrile as solvent. Screening of the resulting 2-aminothiazole library in a herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1) assay led to three confirmed hits, demonstrating the potential of this method for rapid lead optimization. 

Nucleophilic substitution reactions of halide anions in aprotic solvents are often accompanied by elimination reactions. For instance, reactions of secondary alkyl halides with potassium fluoride solubilized in acetonitrile with the aid of 18-crown-6 [3] give olefins as the main reaction product (Liotta and Harris, 1974). Similarly, the dicyclohexyl-18-crown-6 complex of potassium iodide acted exclusively as a base in its reaction with 2-bromo-octane in DMF (Sam and Simmons, 1974). The strongly basic character of weakly solvated fluoride has been exploited in peptide synthesis (Klausner and Chorev, 1977 Chorev and Klausner, 1976). It was shown that potassium fluoride solubilized... 

Iodide is a good nucleophile. It attacks the least substituted carbon of the oxonlum ion formed in step 1 and displaces an alcohol molecule by S 2 mechanism. Thus, in the cleavage of mixed ethers with two different alkyl groups, the alcohol and alkyl Iodide formed, depend on the nature of alkyl groups. When primary or secondary alkyl groups are present. It Is the lower alkyl group that forms kyl Iodide (Sn2 reaction). 

Alkyl azides. Sodium azide as such is of little use for preparation of alkyl azides by nucleophilic substitution reactions because of solubility problems. The reaction can be carried out under phase-transfer conditions with methyltrioctylam-monium chloride/NaN3.3 An even more effective polymeric reagent can be obtained by reaction of NaN3 with Amberlite IR-400.4 This reagent converts alkyl bromides, iodides, or tosylates into azides at 20° in essentially quantitative yield. The solvents of choice are CH3CN, CHC13, ether, or DMF. 

The addition of functionalized alkyl radicals to protonated heteroaromatics was more difficult (because the radicals could not be generated by H-atom abstraction), but a recent development holds promise to resolve this problem. Generation of a methyl radical in the presence of an alkyl iodide sets up a relatively rapid equilibrium as indicated in Scheme 85. This equilibrium will favor any more highly substituted alkyl radical over methyl, and further, this latter radical will be significantly more nucleophilic. Thus when methyl radicals are generated in the presence of cyclohexyl iodide and a protonated quinaldine, die... 

Homofamesyl iodide 7 was prepared by the reaction sequence shown in the margin. Of interest here is the two-step transformation of an alkyl halide into a Crextended alkyl halide.9 Compound 30 is first subjected to a nucleophilic substitution by an urganolithium species with formation of a homoallylic phenyl thioether This is then methylated in a second step to an intermediate sulfonium salt. The final SN2 reaction with an iodide ion releases thioanisol as a stable leaving group to give compound 7. 

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