Electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions electrophilicity parameters

A far more serious consideration is the adequacy of the solvolysis of phenyldimethylcarbinyl chlorides as a model reaction for electrophilic substitution. As will be shown, the cr -parameters derived from the phenyldimethylcarbinyl chloride studies are in good agreement with the a+-values deduced from the data for electrophilic substitution. Not all model reactions would have proved as satisfactory. As this research developed, it became clear that the influences of substituents on aromatic substitution reactions are quite accurately described by the other hand, the relative rates for electrophilic side-chain reactions of which the phenyldimethylcarbinyl chloride solvolysis is characteristic are not as adequately correlated by these constants. 

Obviously, more work is required to further substantiate the presence of the proposed radical intermediates in the p-hydroxybenzoate hydroxylase reaction, possibly via EPR and spin-trapping studies. Studies by Detmer and Massey 247) on phenol hydroxylase have indicated that the reaction rate constants for the conversion of meta-substituted substrates plotted versus the Hammett parameters yield a straight line of slope equal to 0.5. This is consistent with the mechanism proposed by Anderson, as the negative slope is expected for an electrophilic aromatic substitution reaction, while the small magnitude of the slope may be indicative of a radical mechanism. Furthermore, recent work by Massey and co-workers on p-hydroxybenzoate hydroxylase utilizing 6-hydroxy-FAD as cofactor and p-aminobenzoate as substrate indicated that the absorption spectrum of intermediate 67 exhibited a satellite band at 440 nm 248). Anderson et al. suggest that the satellite band may result from the formation of an aromatic phenoxyl radical at the C-6 position of the isoalloxazine ring of the flavin 244). This species would result from a shift of the initial peroxyl radical center from C(4a) to C-6 via N(5) 245). 

There were two schools of thought concerning attempts to extend Hammett s treatment of substituent effects to electrophilic substitutions. It was felt by some that the effects of substituents in electrophilic aromatic substitutions were particularly susceptible to the specific demands of the reagent, and that the variability of the polarizibility effects, or direct resonance interactions, would render impossible any attempted correlation using a two-parameter equation. - o This view was not universally accepted, for Pearson, Baxter and Martin suggested that, by choosing a different model reaction, in which the direct resonance effects of substituents participated, an equation, formally similar to Hammett s equation, might be devised to correlate the rates of electrophilic aromatic and electrophilic side chain reactions. We shall now consider attempts which have been made to do this. 

The applicability of the two-parameter equation and the constants devised by Brown to electrophilic aromatic substitutions was tested by plotting values of the partial rate factors for a reaction against the appropriate substituent constants. It was maintained that such comparisons yielded satisfactory linear correlations for the results of many electrophilic substitutions, the slopes of the correlations giving the values of the reaction constants. If the existence of linear free energy relationships in electrophilic aromatic substitutions were not in dispute, the above procedure would suffice, and the precision of the correlation would measure the usefulness of the p+cr+ equation. However, a point at issue was whether the effect of a substituent could be represented by a constant, or whether its nature depended on the specific reaction. To investigate the effect of a particular substituent in different reactions, the values for the various reactions of the logarithms of the partial rate factors for the substituent were plotted against the p+ values of the reactions. This procedure should show more readily whether the effect of a substituent depends on the reaction, in which case deviations from a hnear relationship would occur. It was concluded that any variation in substituent effects was random, and not a function of electron demand by the electrophile. ... 

More than just a few parameters have to be considered when modelling chemical reactivity in a broader perspective than for the well-defined but restricted reaction sets of the preceding section. Here, however, not enough statistically well-balanced, quantitative, experimental data are available to allow multilinear regression analysis (MLRA). An additional complicating factor derives from comparison of various reactions, where data of quite different types are encountered. For example, how can product distributions for electrophilic aromatic substitutions be compared with acidity constants of aliphatic carboxylic acids And on the side of the parameters how can the influence on chemical reactivity of both bond dissociation energies and bond polarities be simultaneously handled when only limited data are available ... 

For electrophilic side-chain reactions, it is pointed out that such an expression is not appropriate because of the serious differences in the mode of delocalization of charge. Just as it is difficult to assess the necessity of applying the four-parameter equation for aromatic substitution so it is equally difficult to ascertain the usefulness of a five-parameter equation. 

The potential to describe the chemical reaction path is emerging from the DF theory. Pearson [69] and Parr et al. [70] have proposed a principle of maximum hardness stable molecules arrange themselves as to be as hard as possible. Zhou and Parr introduced the activation hardness parameter for the electrophilic aromatic substitution [71], The same authors have shown a correlation between the absolute hardness of a molecule and aromacity [72]. Nalewajski et al. studied the protonation reaction and described the relation between the interaction energy and charge sensitivities hardness, softness, Fukui function [28, 38]. 

Electrophilicity parameters, E, have been measured for a range of aliphatic and aromatic aldehydes, Al-acceptor-substituted araldimines, and a,/S-unsaturated ketones, based on rates of several reaction classes measured spectrophotometricaUy in DMSO. ... 

A quantitative description of the reactivity of monosubstituted benzenes to electrophilic substitution based on considerations of inductive effect parameters and con-jugative effect parameters from the 13 C chemical shifts of the aromatic compounds has been proposed.3 MO calculations on the proton migration in the ipso adducts formed in the reaction of CH3+ and SiH3+ with benzene have been described.4 With SiH3+ the ipso adduct is the most stable of possible isomers, whereas for CH3+ the >ara-protonated isomer is the most stable. 

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