Carbocations Friedel-Crafts alkylation with

Note This reaction involves a polar acidic mechanism, not a free-radical mechanism It is a Friedel-Crafts alkylation, with the slight variation that the requisite carbocation is made by protonation of an alkene instead of ionization of an alkyl halide. Protonation of C4 gives a C3 carbocation. Addition to Cl and fragmentation gives the product. 

The mechanism of Friedel-Crafts alkylation with alkyl halides involves initial formation of the active alkylating agent, which then reacts with the aromatic ring. Depending on the catalyst, the solvent, the reaction conditions, and the alkyl halide, the formation of a polarized donor-acceptor complex or real carbocations (as either an ion pair or a free entity) may take place ... 

Rearrangements of this type involving carbocation intermediates often occur in Friedel-Crafts alkylations with primary and secondary alkyl groups larger than C2 and C3. Related carbocation rearrangements are discussed in Sections 8-9B and 15-5E. 

Product B must arise from a Friedel-Crafts alkylation with the f-butyl cation as intermediate This comes from the loss of carbon monoxide from the acylium ion. Such a reaction happens oniv when the simple carbocation is stable. 

Phenols undergo Friedel-Crafts alkylations with allylic chlorides or allylic alcohols over solid acid catalysts such as acidic KIO clay. For example, 2-buten-l-ol gives 3-aryl-1-butene and 1-ary 1-2-butene, albeit in low yields (12%) (equation 11). Allyl carbocations are involved as the reaction intermediates in these reactions. ... 

The carbocation is planar, so the aromatic ring can attack either face of the carbocation, with equal likelihood. As a result, a Friedel-Crafts alkylation with this optically active alkyl halide is expected to produce a pair of enantiomeric products ... 

All lation of Phenols. The approach used to synthesize commercially available alkylphenols is Friedel-Crafts alkylation. The specific procedure typically uses an alkene as the alkylating agent and an acid catalyst, generally a sulfonic acid. Alkene and catalyst interact to form a carbocation and counter ion (5) which interacts with phenol to form a 7T complex (6). This complex is held together by the overlap of the filled TT-orbital of the aromatic... 

Friedel-Crafts alkylation Alcohols in combination with acids serve as sources of carbocations. Attack of a carbocation on the electron-rich ring of a phenol brings about its alkylation. 

Many variations of the reaction can be carried out, including halogenation, nitration, and sulfonation. Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation reactions, which involve reaction of an aromatic ling with carbocation electrophiles, are particularly useful. They are limited, however, by the fact that the aromatic ring must be at least as reactive as a halobenzene. In addition, polyalkylation and carbocation rearrangements often occur in Friedel-Crafts alkylation. 

From what has been said thus far, it is evident that the electrophile in Friedel-Crafts alkylation is a carbocation, at least in most cases. This is in accord with the knowledge that carbocations rearrange in the direction primary — secondary —> tertiary (see Chapter 18). In each case, the cation is formed from the attacking reagent and the catalyst. For the three most important types of reagent these reactions are... 

The mechanism for the production of 9-((chlorosilyl)alkyl)(luorenes from the Friedel-Crafts alkylation reaction of biphenyl with (l,2-dichloroethyl)silane in the presence of aluminum chloride as catalyst is outlined in Scheme 4. At the beginning stage of the reaction, one of two C—Cl bondsof (1,2-dichloroethyl)silane (CICH2—CICH—SiXi) interacts with aluminum chloride catalyst to give intermediate 1 (a polar +C-CI - ( +C-C1—Al CI3) or a carbocation C AICU ... 

Intermodular Alkylation by Carbocations. The formation of carbon-carbon bonds by electrophilic attack on the ir system is a very important reaction in aromatic chemistry, with both Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation following this pattern. These reactions are discussed in Chapter 11. There also are useful reactions in which carbon-carbon bond formation results from electrophilic attack by a carbocation on an alkene. The reaction of a carbocation with an alkene to form a new carbon-carbon bond is both kinetically accessible and thermodynamically favorable. 

However, although we invoked a Lewis acid complex to provide the halonium electrophile, there is considerable evidence that, where appropriate, the electrophile in Friedel-Crafts alkylations is actually the dissociated carbocation itself. Of course, a simple methyl or ethyl cation is unlikely to be formed, so there we should assume a Lewis acid complex as the electrophilic species. On the other hand, if we can get a secondary or tertiary carbocation, then this is probably what happens. There are good stereochemical reasons why a secondary or tertiary complex cannot be attacked. Just as we saw with Sn2 reactions (see Section 6.1), if there is too much steric hindrance, then the reaction becomes SnI type. 

This involvement of carbocations actually limits the utility of Friedel-Crafts alkylations, because, as we have already noted with carbocations, rearrangement reactions complicate the anticipated outcome (see Section 6.4.2). For instance, when a Lewis acid... 

To be really satisfactory, a Friedel-Crafts alkylation requires one relatively stable secondary or tertiary carbocation to be formed from the alkyl halide by interaction with the Lewis acid, i.e. cases where there is not going to be any chance of rearrangement. Note also that we are unable to generate carboca-tions from an aryl halide - aryl cations (also vinyl cations, see Section 8.1.3) are unfavourable - so that we cannot nse the Friedel-Crafts reaction to join aromatic gronps. There is also one further difficulty, as we shall see below. This is the fact that introduction of an alkyl substitnent on to an aromatic ring activates the ring towards fnrther electrophilic substitution. The result is that the initial product from Friedel-Crafts alkylations is more reactive than the... 

When optically pure (S)- 1-phenylethanol Id was treated with p-xylene only racemic 1,1-diarylalkane 4a was isolated (Scheme 6). This strongly implies a carbocation as the reactive intermediate in the Bi(OTf)3-catalyzed Friedel-Crafts alkylations. Mechanistically, it is not clear whether Bi(III), in situ generated TfOH, or both Lewis and Brpnsted acids together are involved in the catalytic cycle... 

The stereochemical outcome of Friedel-Crafts alkylation may be either inversion (nucleophilic displacement) or racemization (involvement of a trivalent flat carbocation). Most transformations were shown to occur with complete racemization. In a few instances, inversion or retention was observed. For example, the formation of (—)-l,2-diphenylpropane [(—)-28] from (—)-26 was interpreted to take place through the 27 nonsymmetrically Jt-bridged carbocation, ensuring 50-100% retention of configuration 136... 

Carbocations can rearrange during the Friedel-Crafts alkylation reaction, leading to the formation of unpredicted products. One example is the formation of isopropyl benzene by the reaction of propyl chloride with benzene. 

The example of Friedel-Crafts alkylation is the reaction of benzene with 2-chloropropane (Fig. C). The Lewis acid (A1C13) promotes the formation of the carbocation needed for the reaction and does so by accepting a lone pair of electrons from chlorine to form an unstable intermediate that fragments to give a carbocation and AlCly (Fig. D). 

Two of the reactions that are used in the industrial preparation of detergents are electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions. First, a large hydrocarbon group is attached to a benzene ring by a Friedel-Crafts alkylation reaction employing tetrapropene as the source of the carbocation electrophile. The resulting alkylbenzene is then sulfonated by reaction with sulfuric acid. Deprotonation of the sulfonic acid with sodium hydroxide produces the detergent. 

Carbocations are perhaps the most important electrophiles capable of substituting onto aromatic rings, because this substitution forms a new carbon-carbon bond. Reactions of carbocations with aromatic compounds were first studied in 1877 by the French alkaloid chemist Charles Friedel and his American partner, James Crafts. In the presence of Lewis acid catalysts such as aluminum chloride (A1C13) or ferric chloride (FeCl3), alkyl halides were found to alkylate benzene to give alkylbenzenes. This useful reaction is called the Friedel-Crafts alkylation. 

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