Arenes aromatic nitration

The formation of the Wheland intermediate from the ion-radical pair as the critical reactive intermediate is common in both nitration and nitrosation processes. However, the contrasting reactivity trend in various nitrosation reactions with NO + (as well as the observation of substantial kinetic deuterium isotope effects) is ascribed to a rate-limiting deprotonation of the reversibly formed Wheland intermediate. In the case of aromatic nitration with NO, deprotonation is fast and occurs with no kinetic (deuterium) isotope effect. However, the nitrosoarenes (unlike their nitro counterparts) are excellent electron donors as judged by their low oxidation potentials as compared to parent arene.246 As a result, nitrosoarenes are also much better Bronsted bases249 than the corresponding nitro derivatives, and this marked distinction readily accounts for the large differentiation in the deprotonation rates of their respective conjugate acids (i.e., Wheland intermediates). 

E.K. Kim u. J.K. Kochi, Oxidative Aromatic Nitration with Charge-Transfer Complexes of Arenes and Nitrosonium Salts, J. Org. Chem. 54, 1692 (1989). 

Bimolecular reactions of the ion-radical pair can also effectively compete with the back electron transfer if either component undergoes a rapid reaction with an additive that is present during the ET activation. In NO+/arene systems, the introduction of oxygen rapidly oxidizes even small amounts of nitric oxide to compete with back ET and thus successfully effect aromatic nitration [60]. In a related example, the CT complex of hexamethylbenzene and maleic anhydride reaches a photostationary state with no productive reaction. However, if irradiation is carried out in the presence of an acid, the anion radical in the resulting contact ion-radical pair is readily protonated, and the redox equilibrium is driven toward coupling (in competition with the back ET) to yield the photoadduct [59], i.e. ... 

Steric Control of the Inner/Outer-Sphere Electron Transfer 461 Thermal and Photochemical ET in Strongly Coupled CT Complexes 463 Electron-Transfer Paradigm for Arene Transformation via CT Complexes 465 Electron-Transfer Activation of Electrophilic Aromatic Substitution 469 Structural Pre-organization of the Reactants in CT Complexes 470 CT Complexes in Aromatic Nitration and Nitrosation 472 Concluding Summary 475 References 475... 

Moreover, the facile bimolecular reactions of the cationic donor RH and/or the anicmic acceptor A, especially with additives diat are present during oxidation, can accomplish the same displacement of the redox equilibria in measure with the competition from back electron transfer. For example, the arene activation with nitrosonium ion merely reaches a low steady-state concentration of the radical pair, which persists indefinitely in equation (13). However, oxygen r idly tnq>s even small amounts of nitric oxide to render back electron transfer ineffective, and successfully effects aromatic nitration (Scheme 3). ... 

Aromatic nitration. A simple method of nitration involves treatment of arenes with HNOj-ACjO in the presence of zeolite P at 0°. 

Electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions are a very important class of chemical reactions that allow the introduction of substituents on to arenes by replacing a hydrogen atom covalently bonded to the aromatic ring structure by an electrophile. The most common reactions of this type are aromatic nitrations, halogenations, Friedel-Crafts alkylations and acylations, formylations, sulfonations, azo couplings and carboxylations - to name just a few. 

Nevertheless, such reactions catalyzed by zeolites have been discussed in the review of 2001 (1) isomerization (double-bond shift, isomerization of tricyclic molecules, like synthesis of adamantane, isomerization of terpenes, diverse rearrangements, conversion of aldehydes into ketones), (2) electrophilic substitution in arenes (alkylation of aromatics, including the synthesis of linear alkylbenzenes, alkylation and acylation of phenols, heteroarenes and amines, aromatics nitration and halogenation), (3) cyclization, including the formation of heterocycles, Diels-Alder reaction, (4) nucleophilic substitution and addition,... 

The diazonio group can also be replaced by —OH to yield a phenol and by —H to yield an arene. A phenol is prepared by reaction of the arenediazonium salt with copper(I) oxide in an aqueous solution of copper(ll) nitrate, a reaction that is especially useful because few other general methods exist for introducing an -OH group onto an aromatic ring. 

Nitration of aromatic rings by nitronium tetrafluoroborate is a general method. Fifty-seven arenes, haloarenes, nitroarenes,... 

Some time ago Tedder (1957) recommended a process which he called direct introduction of the diazonium group , because it replaces the steps of nitration, reduction, and diazotization of an aromatic compound by a one-pot operation with three equivalents of a nitrosating reagent in acidic solution. The first step (Scheme 2-35) is a C-nitrosation and the following steps (Scheme 2-36) are the reduction of the nitroso-arene. 

Arene oxides can be intermediates in the bacterial transformation of aromatic compounds and initiate rearrangements (NIH shifts) (Dalton et al. 1981 Cerniglia et al. 1984 Adriaens 1994). The formation of arene oxides may plausibly provide one mechanism for the formation of nitro-substituted products during degradation of aromatic compounds when nitrate is present in the medium. This is discussed in Chapter 2. 

Finally, we ask, if the reactive triads in Schemes 1 and 19 are common to both electrophilic and charge-transfer nitration, why is the nucleophilic pathway (k 2) apparently not pertinent to the electrophilic activation of toluene and anisole One obvious answer is that the electrophilic nitration of these less reactive [class (ii)] arenes proceeds via a different mechanism, in which N02 is directly transferred from V-nitropyridinium ion in a single step, without the intermediacy of the reactive triad, since such an activation process relates to the more conventional view of electrophilic aromatic substitution. However, the concerted mechanism for toluene, anisole, mesitylene, t-butylbenzene, etc., does not readily accommodate the three unique facets that relate charge-transfer directly to electrophilic nitration, viz., the lutidine syndrome, the added N02 effect, and the TFA neutralization (of Py). Accordingly, let us return to Schemes 10 and 19, and inquire into the nature of thermal (adiabatic) electron transfer in (87) vis-a-vis the (vertical) charge-transfer in (62). 

Step (1) is reminiscent of electrophilic addition to an alkene. Aromatic substitution differs in that the intermediate carbocation (a benzenonium ion) loses a cation (most often to give the substitution product, rather than adding a nucleophile to give the addition product. The benzenonium ion is a specific example of an arenonium ion, formed by electrophilic attack on an arene (Section 11.4). It is also called a sigma complex, because it arises by formation of a o-bond between E and the ring. See Fig. 11-1 for a typical enthalpy-reaction curve for the nitration of an arene. 

Substitution reactions at aromatic carbon (see also Reduction reactions, Ullmann ether coupling, specific reactions such as Nitration) Arene(tricarbonyl)chromium complexes, 19... 

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