And nucleophilic strength

In Section 2.11, you saw that Lewis acids are compounds that accept a share in a pair of electrons and Lewis bases are compounds that donate a share in a pair of electrons. Thus, electrophiles are Lewis acids and nucleophiles are Lewis bases. So, saying that an electrophile reacts with a nucleophile is the same as saying that a Lewis acid reacts with a Lewis base. However, because the Lewis definitions are so broad, we will use the term base when a Lewis base reacts with a proton and nucleophile when it reacts with something other than a proton. (This is an important distinction because base strength is a thermodynamic property and nucleophile strength is a kinetic property.)... 

Bifunctional catalysis in nucleophilic aromatic substitution was first observed by Bitter and Zollinger34, who studied the reaction of cyanuric chloride with aniline in benzene. This reaction was not accelerated by phenols or y-pyridone but was catalyzed by triethylamine and pyridine and by bifunctional catalysts such as a-pyridone and carboxylic acids. The carboxylic acids did not function as purely electrophilic reagents, since there was no relationship between catalytic efficiency and acid strength, acetic acid being more effective than chloracetic acid, which in turn was a more efficient catalyst than trichloroacetic acid. For catalysis by the carboxylic acids Bitter and Zollinger proposed the transition state depicted by H. 

The reaction temperature varies between -40 and 110 °C, depending on the reactivity of both counterparts, amine and chlorophosphane. As usual, aliphatic amino groups react faster than aromatic and heteroaromatic ones due to their greater nucleophilic strength. These differences in reactivity allow chemose-lective phosphinous amide formation, as that represented in Scheme 2 where the P-N bond is formed exclusively at the aliphatic NH2 group of 2 but not at the heteroaromatic NH2, whose lone pair is extensively delocalized in the electron-withdrawing purine ring [35]. 

A. Nucleophilic Attack on Carbon. —(/) Activated Olefins. A study of triarylphosphine-catalysed dimerization of acrylonitrile to 2-methylene-glutaronitrile (26) and 1,4-dicyano-l-butene (27) has established a balance between phosphine nucleophilicity and protolytic strength of the solvent. The reaction of methyl vinyl ketone with triphenylphosphine in triethyl-silanol gave only 3-methylene-2,6-heptadienone (28). 

In contrast to the lability of certain dN adducts formed by the BHT metabolite above, amino acid and protein adducts formed by this metabolite were relatively stable.28,29 The thiol of cysteine reacted most rapidly in accord with its nucleophilic strength and was followed in reactivity by the a-amine common to all amino acids. This type of amine even reacted preferentially over the e-amine of lysine.28 In proteins, however, the e-amine of lysine and thiol of cysteine dominate reaction since the vast majority of a-amino groups are involved in peptide bonds. Other nucleophilic side chains such as the carboxylate of aspartate and glutamate and the imidazole of histidine may react as well, but their adducts are likely to be too labile to detect as suggested by the relative stability of QMs and the leaving group ability of the carboxylate and imidazole groups (see Section 9.2.3). 

The electron densities, bond orders, first six excitation energies, oscillator strengths, and weighting factors of pyrido[l,2-f)]pyridazinium cation were calculated by the PPP semiempirical version of the SCFMO-CI method, which indicated that protonation is expected to take place at the nonbridgehead nitrogen, and nucleophilic substitution is predicted to occur at position 3 (68TCA417i... 

The lone pair of electrons on the N atom of amines accounts for their base strength and nucleophilicity. They abstract protons from water, react with Lewis acids, and attack electrophilic sites such as carbonyl carbon. 

NUCLEOPHILIC Versus GENERAL BASE CATALYSIS BY ACETATE ION OF THE HYDROLYSIS OF ARYL ACETATES IN WATER AT pH 5.0 AND IONIC STRENGTH... 

Data for the reactions of several cyclic tertiary amines with phenyl, 4-nitro-phenyl and 2,4-dinitrophenyl acetates, at 25°C and ionic strength 1.0, appear in Table 40, and as a Bronsted plot in Fig. 20. The usual irregularities of such plots for nucleophilic attack are evident. Linear relationships between log k and pKa are generally found for groups of compounds of closely similar structure, as for the substituted pyridines in Fig. 20. The data for the two tricyclic amines fall on separate curves, and the points for imidazole clearly fall on neither of the first two sets of lines. The separate lines for the reactions of particular classes of nucleophile are approximately parallel, as is usually found. 

With 5-33.3 vol.% water/acetone mixtures, it is found136 that common-ion salts have no effect on the rate of hydrolysis of benzoyl chloride whereas the rate in 15% (but not 33.3%) water is increased by the addition of neutral salts such as lithium bromide or potassium nitrate. The increase in ionic strength on the addition of neutral salts is not the major reason for the increase in rate and nucleophilic catalysis via the more easily hydrolysed benzoyl bromide was postulated. 

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