Early electronegativities

A Fe-H bond is generally polarized as Fe -H because H is more electronegative than Fe. However, iron hydride complexes impart much less negative charge to the hydride than early transition-metal hydride complexes. 

Nevertheless, as early as 1933 it was suggested that xenon might form stable compounds with the most electronegative elements, fluorine and oxygen. Early attempts to react xenon directly with fluorine were unsuccessful, and chemists ignored this possibility for the next 30 years. 

The recent interest in the exploration of electrocatalytic phenomena from first principles can be traced to the early cluster calculations of Anderson [1990] and Anderson and Debnath [1983]. These studies considered the interaction of adsorbates with model metal clusters and related the potential to the electronegativity determined as the average of the ionization potential and electron affinity—quantities that are easily obtained from molecular orbital calculations. In some iterations of this model, changes in reaction chemistry induced by the electrochemical environment... 

Another early suggestion was that some of the fullerene carbon atoms could be replaced by another element such as nitrogen or boron.1811 Such heterofullerenes are envisaged to have strongly altered chemical properties in comparison to the all-carbon structures.1811 For example, as the substitution number of an electronegative element such... 

There are early reviews discussing the chemistry and properties of pseudoazulenes.311312 Unsubstituted pseudoazulenes are rather unstable, but benzocon-densation and substituents stabilize the molecule, for the latter in agreement with the electronegativities of the heteroatoms. No Diels—Alder reactions occur between pseudoazulenes and dienes, a fact which is consistent with a certain degree of aromaticity. A pseudoazulene with a pyranic ring was formed from benzyl and cyclopentadiene with sodium methox-ide.313... 

As mentioned in the Introduction, no structural information on these species was available for more than 40 years after the discovery of the first Zintl metal cluster anions, since no pure crystalline phases could be isolated and characterized structurally. Nevertheless, early efforts to rationalize the observed formulas and chemical bonding of these intermetallics and related molecules utilized the Zintl-Klemm concept [75, 76] and the Mooser-Pearson [77] extended (8 — N) rule. In this rule N refers to the number of valence electrons of the more electronegative metal (and thus anionic metal) in the intermetallic phases. 

In early work, Spiesecke and Schneider (59) pointed out that inductive effects alone cannot account for a- and -signal shifts. They held diamagnetic neighbor-anisotropy effects (63) arising from anisotropic electron-charge distributions responsible for the deviations in the electronegativity correlations. For bonds with conical symmetry they applied McConnell s magnetic point-dipole approximation (64) for the estimation of this contribution, Act ... 

Therefore, Cjq was predicted to be a fairly electronegative molecule, being reducible up to the hexaanion [8]. Indeed, this was supported by very early investigations carried out with in solution, namely cyclic voltammetry studies, which showed its facile and stepwise reduction. In these first investigations, Cgg was reduced by two [9] and three [10] electrons. 

Because the addition steps are generally fast and consequently exothermic chain steps, their transition states should occur early on the reaction coordinate and therefore resemble the starting alkene. This was recently confirmed by ab initio calculations for the attack at ethylene by methyl radicals and fluorene atoms. The relative stability of the adduct radicals therefore should have little influence on reacti-vity 2 ). The analysis of reactivity and regioselectivity for radical addition reactions, however, is even more complex, because polar effects seem to have an important influence. It has been known for some time that electronegative radicals X-prefer to react with ordinary alkenes while nucleophilic alkyl or acyl radicals rather attack electron deficient olefins e.g., cyano or carbonyl substituted olefins The best known example for this behavior is copolymerization This view was supported by different MO-calculation procedures and in particular by the successful FMO-treatment of the regioselectivity and relative reactivity of additions of radicals to a series of alkenes An excellent review of most of the more recent experimental data and their interpretation was published recently by Tedder and... 

If the combination of a high-resolution separation system with a physicochemical detection principle is specific to properties of many harmful (toxic) chemicals, then a straightforward approach may be possible (27). Electron capture detection (ECD) registers electronegative compounds. Since the early 1960s, Lovelock (28) has pointed at the possible link between the ability of a substance to capture electrons and its biological action. 

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