Association solvent effects

The number of solvent systems and their associated solvent effects examined is so enormous that a complete description of all aspects would fill several volumes. For example, in Chemical Abstracts, volume 85 (1976), approximately eleven articles per week were quoted in which the words Solvent effects on. .. appeared in the title. In the present book only a few important and relatively well-defined areas of general importance have been selected. The book has been written from the point of view of practical use for the organic chemist rather than from a completely theoretical one. 

Over the last twenty years , there has been a resurgence into the measurement of acidity of organic molecules and its associated solvent effects (e.g. in heptane, cyclohexane , THF and cyclohexylamine ). These have generally been measured using close comparison indicators of known pX, determined by colorimetric, spectroscopic and polarimetric methods " . The carbonyl (C=0) group with its a- and... 

Because the key operation in studying solvent effects on rates is to vary the solvent, evidently the nature of the solvation shell will vary as the solvent is changed. A distinction is often made between general and specific solvent effects, general effects being associated (by hypothesis) with some appropriate physical property such as dielectric constant, and specific effects with particular solute-solvent interactions in the solvation shell. In this context the idea of preferential solvation (or selective solvation) is often invoked. If a reaction is studied in a mixed solvent. 

Compute the frequency associated with carbonyl stretch in solution with acetonitrUe for the carbonyl systems we looked at in the gas phase in Chapter 4. Run your calculations using RHF/6-31+G(d) with the Onsager SCRF model. Discuss the substituent effect on the predicted solvent effects. 

Dimers (73) and (74) were formed in approximately equal amounts in all cases, although, as in the cases of 2-cyclopentenone and 2-cyclohexenone, the relative amount of (72) (either cis-syn-cis or cis-anti-cis) was found to vary substantially with solvent polarity. As in 2-cyclopentenone, this increase in the rate of head-to-head dimerization was attributed to stabilization of the increase in dipole moment in going to the transition state leading to (72) in polar solvents. It is thought that the solvent effect in this case is not associated with the state of aggregation since a plot of Stem-Volmer plot and complete quenching with 0.2 M piperylene indicate that the reaction proceeds mainly from the triplet manifold. However, the rates of formation of head-to-head and head-to-tail dimers do not show the same relationship when sensitized by benzophenone as in the direct photolysis. This effect, when combined with different intercepts for head-to-head and head-to-tail dimerizations quenched by piperylene in the Stem-Volmer plot, indicates that two distinct excited triplet states are involved with differing efficiencies of population. The nature of these two triplets has not been disclosed. 

Surfactants, not surprisingly, exert a highly significant influence on the fluorescence of FBAs in solution. This effect is associated with the critical micelle concentration of the surfactant and may be regarded as a special type of solvent effect. Anionic surfactants have almost no influence on the performance of anionic FBAs on cotton, but nonionic surfactants may exert either positive or negative effects on the whiteness of the treated substrate [33]. Cationic surfactants would be expected to have a negative influence, but this is not always so [34]. No general rule can be formulated and each case has to be considered separately. 

An unusual solvent effect was observed in cycloadditions of aromatic nitrile N-oxides with alkyl-substituted p-benzoquinones in ethanol-water (60 40) the reaction rates were 14-fold greater than those in chloroform (148). The use of ion pairs to control nitrile oxide cycloadditions was demonstrated. A chiral auxiliary bearing an ionic group and an associated counterion provides enhanced selectivity in the cycloaddition the intramolecular salt effect controls the orientation of the... 

The relationship between the geometry of the saddle point of index one (SPi-1) and the accessibility to the quantum transition states cannot be proved, but it can be postulated [43,172], To some extent, invariance of the geometry associated with the SPi-1 would entail an invariance of the quantum states responsible for the interconversion. Thus, if a chemical process follows the same mechanism in different solvents, the invariance of the geometry of the SPi-1 to solvent effects would ensure the mechanistic invariance. This idea has been proposed by us based on computational evidence during the study of some enzyme catalyzed reactions [94, 96, 97, 100-102, 173, 174, 181-184],... 

The SjvAr reactions with amines in chloroform show a peculiar behaviour and the rates cannot usually be correlated with reactions in other solvents. It has been observed in the reaction of 2,4-dinitrochlorobenzene with piperidine480 and in the reaction of 1,2-DNB with butylamine115 that chloroform exerts a special solvent effect due to its known hydrogen-bond donor ability. Thus, an association between the solvent and the nucleophile can be postulated as a side-reaction to the S Ar115. Associations of chloroform with amines are known122 and the assumption of a partial association between piperidine or butylamine and chloroform as the cause of the downward curvature in the plots of k vs [amine] seems plausible. 

The activation of various reactions by Lewis acids is now an everyday practice in synthetic organic chemistry. In contrast, solvent effects on Lewis acid catalysed Diels-Alder reactions have received much less attention. A change in the solvent can affect the association step leading to the transition structure. Ab initio calculations on the Diels-Alder reaction of cyclopentadiene and methyl vinyl ketone in aqueous media showed that there is a complex of the reactants which also involves one water molecule119. In an extreme case solvents can even impede catalysis120. The use of inert solvents such as dichloromethane and chloroform for synthetic applications of Lewis acid catalysed Diels-Alder reactions is thus well justified. General solvent effects, in particular those of water, will be discussed in the following section. 

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