Electron withdrawing groups substituent effects

Electron releasing substituents attached to the ring have a negligible effect on the acidity of phenols Strongly electron withdrawing groups increase the acidity The compound 4 nitro 3 (tnfluoromethyl)phenol for example is 10 000 times more acidic than phenol... 

A tertiary carbonium ion is more stable than a secondary carbonium ion, which is in turn more stable than a primary carbonium ion. Therefore, the alkylation of ben2ene with isobutylene is much easier than is alkylation with ethylene. The reactivity of substituted aromatics for electrophilic substitution is affected by the inductive and resonance effects of a substituent. An electron-donating group, such as the hydroxyl and methyl groups, activates the alkylation and an electron-withdrawing group, such as chloride, deactivates it. 

The incorporation of heteroatoms can result in stereoelectronic effects that have a pronounced effect on conformation and, ultimately, on reactivity. It is known from numerous examples in carbohydrate chemistry that pyranose sugars substituted with an electron-withdrawing group such as halogen or alkoxy at C-1 are often more stable when the substituent has an axial, rather than an equatorial, orientation. This tendency is not limited to carbohydrates but carries over to simpler ring systems such as 2-substituted tetrahydropyrans. The phenomenon is known as the anomeric ect, because it involves a substituent at the anomeric position in carbohydrate pyranose rings. Scheme 3.1 lists... 

The effect of the bond dipole associated with electron-withdrawing groups can also be expressed in terms of its interaction with the cationic u-complex. The atoms with the highest coefficients in the LUMO 3 are the most positive. The unfavorable interaction of the bond dipole will therefore be greatest at these positions. This effect operates with substituents such as carbonyl, cyano, and nitro groups. With ether and amino substituents, the unfavorable dipole interaction is overwhelmed by the stabilizing effect of the lone-pair electrons stabilizing 3. 

Radical chlorination reactions show a substantial polar effect. Positions substituted by electron-withdrawing groups are relatively unreactive toward chlorination, even though the substituents may be potentially capable of stabilizing the free-radical intermediate " ... 

Similarly, carboxylic acid and ester groups tend to direct chlorination to the / and v positions, because attack at the a position is electronically disfavored. The polar effect is attributed to the fact that the chlorine atom is an electrophilic species, and the relatively electron-poor carbon atom adjacent to an electron-withdrawing group is avoided. The effect of an electron-withdrawing substituent is to decrease the electron density at the potential radical site. Because the chlorine atom is highly reactive, the reaction would be expected to have a very early transition state, and this electrostatic effect predominates over the stabilizing substituent effect on the intermediate. The substituent effect dominates the kinetic selectivity of the reaction, and the relative stability of the radical intermediate has relatively little influence. 

Feng et al. [3] have studied the structural effect of acetanilide on the AAM polymerization either in water-for-mamide [3], water-acetonitrile [4], and water-DMF [26] mixed solution using Ce(IV) ion-acetanilide and its substituted derivatives as the initiator. The results showed that an electron donating substituent on the phenyl group would enhance the Rp, while an electron withdrawing group would decrease it, as shown in Table 1 [26]. 

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