Carbocations benzhydryl

A new Y solvolysis scale has been developed for benzylic species with extensive charge delocalization, based upon the solvolyses of some benzhydryl bromides and /-butyl(2-naphthyl)methyl bromides.39 Chlorides have negative salt effects on the ionization of benzhydryl bromide in 7-butyrolactone.40 The X-ray structure of the dimerization product of l,8-bis(dhnethylammonio)-4-naphthyl(phenyl)methyl carbocation has been determined it appears to be formed via a 4n + 2n-cycloaddition mechanism 41... 

The reaction of sodium borohydride with benzhydryl halides under solvolytic conditions has been reinvestigated.132 Contrary to the literature, NaBHU was not found to be a convenient trap for benzhydryl carbocations. 

In practice, extrapolations of p fR in water have usually used the older acidity function based method, for example, for trityl,61,62 benzhydryl,63 or cyclopropenyl (6) cations.66,67 These older data include studies of protonation of aromatic molecules, such as pKSi = —1.70 for the azulenium ion 3,59 and Kresge s extensive measurements of the protonation of hydroxy- and methoxy-substituted benzenes.68 Some of these data have been replotted as p fR or pKa against XQ with only minor changes in values.25,52 However, for more unstable carbocations such as 2,4,6-trimethylbenzyl, there is a long extrapolation from concentrated acid solutions to water and the discrepancy is greater use of an acidity function in this case gives pA 2° = —17.5,61 compared with —16.3 (and m = 1.8) based on X0. Indeed because of limitations to the acidity of concentrated solutions of perchloric or sulfuric acid pICs of more weakly nucleophilic carbocations are not accessible from equilibrium measurements in these media. 

It is not intended to extend this discussion of reactions of carbocations with water to consideration of the alcoholic solvents trifluoroethanol (TFE) and hexa-fluoroisopropanol (HFIP), which have been extensively studied and reviewed by McClelland and Steenken.3 However, an important point of interest of these solvents is that their reactivities toward carbocations are greatly reduced compared with water (by up to a factor of 104 in TFE and 108 in HFIP) and that differences in rate constants can be observed between cations which would react indiscriminately at the solvent relaxation limit in water. The following comparisons of rate constants for carbocations with similar pAR values reacting with hexafluoroiso-propanol241,242 reinforces the conclusion that structural variations in the cation lead to changes in intrinsic barrier and, for example, that phenyl substitution is probably associated with such an increase in going from benzyl to benzhydryl (although the benzyl cation itself is not shown). 

Choride ion is considerably less reactive than the azide ion. Thus, although values of kc 1/ kn2o have been quite widely available from mass law effects of chloride ion on the solvolysis of aralkyl halides, normally the reaction of the chloride ion cannot be assumed to be diffusion controlled and the value of kn2o cannot be inferred, except for relatively unstable carbocations (p. 72). Mayr and coworkers251 have measured rate constants for reaction of chloride ion with benzhydryl cations in 80% aqueous acetonitrile and their values of logk are plotted together with a value for the trityl cation19 in Fig. 7. There is some scatter in the points, possibly because of some steric hindrance to reaction of the trityl cations. However, it can be seen that chloride ion is more... 

Just as N for a nucleophile can be determined from a plot of log k against E for a series of electrophiles, in principle, the value of E for an electrophile can be determined from the intercept (at E + N = 0) of a plot of log (k/s) versus N for a series of nucleophiles (or indeed, if need be, from the measurement for a single nucleophile). In this way E values have been determined for many electrophiles other than benzhydryl cations, including metal-coordinated cations,186 BF3-coordinated aldehydes,274 tropylium ions, and many benzylic-and heteroatom-substituted carbocations. In the low reactivity range... 

The interpretation of reactivities here provides a particular challenge, because differences in solvation and bond energies contribute differently to reaction rates and equilibria. Analysis in terms of the Marcus equation, in which effects on reactivity arising from changes in intrinsic barrier and equilibrium constant can be separated, is an undoubted advantage. Only rather recently, however, have equilibrium constants, essential to a Marcus analysis, become available for reactions of halide ions with relatively stable carbocations, such as the trityl cation, the bis-trifluoromethyl quinone methide (49), and the rather less stable benzhydryl cations.19,219... 

It seems clear that for reactions of carbocations with nucleophiles or bases in which the structure of the carbocation is varied, we can expect compensating changes in intrinsic barrier and thermodynamic driving force to lead to relationships between rate and equilibrium constants which have the form of extended linear plots of log k against log K. However, this will be strictly true only for structurally homogeneous groups of cations. There is ample evidence that for wider structural variations, for example, between benzyl, benzhydryl, and trityl cations, there are variations in intrinsic barrier particularly reflecting steric effects which lead to dispersion between families of cations. 

Because systematic variations in selectivity with reactivity are commonly quite mild for reactions of carbocations with n-nucleophiles, and practically absent for 71-nucleophiles or hydride donors, many nucleophiles can be characterized by constant N and s values. These are valuable in correlating and predicting reactivities toward benzhydryl cations, a wide structural variety of other electrophiles and, to a good approximation, substrates reacting by an Sn2 mechanism. There are certainly failures in extending these relationships to too wide a variation of carbocation and nucleophile structures, but there is a sufficient framework of regular behavior for the influence of additional factors such as steric effects to be rationally examined as deviations from the norm. Thus comparisons between benzhydryl and trityl cations reveal quite different steric effects for reactions with hydroxylic solvents and alkenes, or even with different halide ions... 

The O-alkylation of carboxylates is a useful alternative to the acid-catalyzed esterification of carboxylic acids with alcohols. Carboxylates are weak, hard nucleophiles which are alkylated quickly by carbocations and by highly reactive, carbocation-like electrophiles (e.g. trityl or some benzhydryl halides). Suitable procedures include treatment of carboxylic acids with alcohols under the conditions of the Mitsunobu reaction [122], or with diazoalkanes. With soft electrophiles, such as alkyl iodides, alkylation of carboxylic acid salts proceeds more slowly, but in polar aprotic solvents, such as DMF, or with non-coordinating cations acceptable rates can still be achieved. Alkylating agents with a high tendency to O-alkylate carboxylates include a-halo ketones [42], dimethyl sulfate [100,123], and benzyl halides (Scheme 6.31). 

Solvolysis of 1-arylethenyl sulphonates forming vinyl cations 303 Highly electron-deficient carbocation systems 304 Carbocation formation equilibria 315 Triarylmethyl cations 315 Benzhydryl cations 319 1,1-Diarylethyl carbocations 322... 

Although the value of the coefficient 1.16 in (20) does not have as direct a physical significance as the a-exponent in the extended Brpnsted equation (19) because the reaction, solvents and temperature are different, there is still a good linear rate-equilibrium relationship for benzhydryl carbocation formation the overall correlation embraces clearly concave partial correlations with varying slopes for the respective Y series. The whole pattern of substituent effects, pXr vs should be essentially identical (with only the ordinate scale being slightly different) to that of log (/ xy/Z hh) vs 2 a for the solvolyses shown in Fig. 8. 

Because of a smaller rotation of 16° in the propeller conformation (E-conformation), the conformation dependence of the substituent effect correlations is not very serious in this system. Nevertheless, the non-linear behaviour should be similar to that in the trityl carbocation system. From comparison of the plots in Figs 8 and 15, the plot for Y = p-MeO for the benzhydryl cation should be related to the correlation for the T-conformation and that for Y = P-NO2 should be related to the P-conformer correlation. The difference in the slopes gives no clue as to the intrinsic selectivity (p) of this system. 

The generally observed identity of the r value for solvolysis reactivity and gas-phase stability AAG(c+> of the corresponding carbocation leads to an important prediction concerning the solvolysis transition state. In a typical (limiting) two-step SnI mechanism with a single dominant transition state, the r values of transition states for the various nucleophile-cation reactions should be essentially controlled by the intrinsic resonance demand of the intermediate cation the substituent effect should be described by a single scale of substituent constants (a) with an r value characteristic of this cation. In a recent laser flash-photolysis study (Das, 1993) on the recombination of stable trityl and benzhydryl cations with nucleophiles and solvents, McClelland et al. (1986, 1989) have treated the substituent effects on solvent-recombination processes by (2). 

The benzhydryl chlorides and BC13 react with formation of ion pairs (ionization constant, Ki) which dissociate to give the free ions (dissociation constant, KD). Because paired and free diarylcarbenium ions show only slightly different UV-visible spectra, [41], spectrophotometric measurements allow the determination of the total carbocation concentration. On the other hand, only free ions are detected by conductometric analysis, and a combination of both methods allows the determination of Ki and Kd using the theory of binary ionogenic equilibria [42,43]. 

The dissociation constant KD, which is often derived from spectral properties in carbanion chemistry, therefore includes a covalent term that corresponds to Kx in carbocationic chemistry. As one would not expect equal reactivity of benzhydryl chloride and benzhydryl cations, one also should not expect equal reactivity for benzhydryl lithium and benzhydryl anions. As one realizes that the terms contact ion-pair and dissociation have a different meaning in carbocation and carbanion chemistry, the apparent discrepancies quoted above, will disappear. 

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