Electrophilic substitution, aromatic selectivity

If acetoxylation were a conventional electrophilic substitution it is hard to understand why it is not more generally observed in nitration in acetic anhydride. The acetoxylating species is supposed to be very much more selective than the nitrating species, and therefore compared with the situation in (say) toluene in which the ratio of acetoxylation to nitration is small, the introduction of activating substituents into the aromatic nucleus should lead to an increase in the importance of acetoxylation relative to nitration. This is, in fact, observed in the limited range of the alkylbenzenes, although the apparently severe steric requirement of the acetoxylation species is a complicating feature. The failure to observe acetoxylation in the reactions of compounds more reactive than 2-xylene has been attributed to the incursion of another mechan-104... 

The selectivity relationship merely expresses the proportionality between intermolecular and intramolecular selectivities in electrophilic substitution, and it is not surprising that these quantities should be related. There are examples of related reactions in which connections between selectivity and reactivity have been demonstrated. For example, the ratio of the rates of reaction with the azide anion and water of the triphenylmethyl, diphenylmethyl and tert-butyl carbonium ions were 2-8x10 , 2-4x10 and 3-9 respectively the selectivities of the ions decrease as the reactivities increase. The existence, under very restricted and closely related conditions, of a relationship between reactivity and selectivity in the reactions mentioned above, does not permit the assumption that a similar relationship holds over the wide range of different electrophilic aromatic substitutions. In these substitution reactions a difficulty arises in defining the concept of reactivity it is not sufficient to assume that the reactivity of an electrophile is related... 

The aromatic nature of lignin contrasts with the aliphatic stmcture of the carbohydrates and permits the selective use of electrophilic substitution reactions, eg, chlorination, sulfonation, or nitration. A portion of the phenoUc hydroxyl units, which are estimated to comprise 30 wt % of softwood lignin, are unsubstituted. In alkaline systems the ionized hydroxyl group is highly susceptible to oxidative reactions. 

In this mechanism, a complexation of the electrophile with the 7t-electron system of the aromatic ring is the first step. This species, called the 7t-complex, m or ms not be involved directly in the substitution mechanism. 7t-Complex formation is, in general, rapidly reversible, and in many cases the equilibrium constant is small. The 7t-complex is a donor-acceptor type complex, with the n electrons of the aromatic ring donating electron density to the electrophile. No position selectivity is associated with the 7t-complex. 

Other matters that are important include the ability of the electrophile to select among the alternative positions on a substituted aromatic ring. The relative reactivity of different substituted benzenes toward various electrophiles has also been important in developing a firm understanding of electrophilic aromatic substitution. The next section considers some of the structure-reactivity relationships that have proven to be informative. 

At this point, attention can be given to specific electrophilic substitution reactions. The kinds of data that have been especially useful for determining mechanistic details include linear ffee-energy relationships, kinetic studies, isotope effects, and selectivity patterns. In general, the basic questions that need to be asked about each mechanism are (1) What is the active electrophile (2) Which step in the general mechanism for electrophilic aromatic substitution is rate-determining (3) What are the orientation and selectivity patterns ... 

Because of the limited range of aromatic compounds that react with diazonium ions, selectivity data comparable to those discussed for other electrophilic substitutions are not available. Because diazotization involves a weak electrophile, it would be expected to reveal high substrate and position selectivity. 

Relatively few bisindole derivatives having unnatural aromatic substituents have been prepared. The most reactive aromatic center to electrophilic substitution is certainly at C-12, where steric hindrance is minimized and electron density favors stabilization of positive charge. Treatment of vinblastine (1) with less than 1.0 equiv of bromine in dichlo-romethane results in selective bromination at C-12 to give 12 -bromovin-blastine (5) (45,46). If excess bromine is employed, then bromination in the dihydroindole ring is also observed, and mixtures of (5) and 12, 17-dibromovinblastine (6) are obtained (46). 

Aromatics. The application of solid acid catalysts provides excellent possibilities to carry out aromatic electrophilic substitutions in an environmentally friendly way. Various zeolites were found by Smith and coworkers to exhibit high activities and selectivities.250 Acetyl nitrate generated in situ from acetic anhydride and HNO3 transforms alkylbenzenes to the corresponding para-nitro derivatives in high yield (92-99%) and with excellent selectivity (79-92%) when applied in the presence of large-pore H-Beta zeolites.251 Lattice flexibility and the coordination of acetyl... 

Electrophilic replacement constants crXr have been obtained for all the positions of benzo[6]thiophene from the solvolysis of isomeric l-(benzo[ >]thienyl)ethyl chlorides in 80% ethanol-water. These constants signify replacement of the entire benzene ring by another aromatic system (74JOC2828). The positional order of reactivity was determined to be 3>2>6>5>4>7, all positions being more reactive than benzene. The same order was also derived from the kinetic data for pyrolysis of the isomeric l-(benzo[6]thienyl)ethyl acetates (78JCS(P2)1053). A modified extended selectivity treatment has been developed to correlate electrophilic substitution data in benzo[Z> ]thiophene, which assumes a dual activation mechanism (79JOC724). 

In the above examples, the nucleophilic role of the metal complex only comes after the formation of a suitable complex as a consequence of the electron-withdrawing effect of the metal. Perhaps the most impressive series of examples of nucleophilic behaviour of complexes is demonstrated by the p-diketone metal complexes. Such complexes undergo many reactions typical of the electrophilic substitution reactions of aromatic compounds. As a result of the lability of these complexes towards acids, care is required when selecting reaction conditions. Despite this restriction, a wide variety of reactions has been shown to occur with numerous p-diketone complexes, especially of chromium(III), cobalt(III) and rhodium(III), but also in certain cases with complexes of beryllium(II), copper(II), iron(III), aluminum(III) and europium(III). Most work has been carried out by Collman and his coworkers and the results have been reviewed.4-29 A brief summary of results is relevant here and the essential reaction is shown in equation (13). It has been clearly demonstrated that reaction does not involve any dissociation, by bromination of the chromium(III) complex in the presence of radioactive acetylacetone. Furthermore, reactions of optically active... 

The mechanism shown in Scheme 1 seems to be die one operating in most of the known examples of the reaction. The initial aromatic palladation is an electrophilic substitution, but unfortunately it is not a very selective one.4 Therefore, isomeric mixtures of products may be expected in cases where palladation can occur at different aromatic positions. 

An attempt has been made to analyse whether the electrophilicity index is a reliable descriptor of the kinetic behaviour. Relative experimental rates of Friedel-Crafts benzylation, acetylation, and benzoylation reactions were found to correlate well with the corresponding calculated electrophilicity values. In the case of chlorination of various substituted ethylenes and nitration of toluene and chlorobenzene, the correlation was generally poor but somewhat better in the case of the experimental and the calculated activation energies for selected Markovnikov and anti-Markovnikov addition reactions. Reaction electrophilicity, local electrophilicity, and activation hardness were used together to provide a transparent picture of reaction rates and also the orientation of aromatic electrophilic substitution reactions. Ambiguity in the definition of the electrophilicity was highlighted.15... 

The Selectivity Relationship was shown to be applicable for substitution in the meta and para positions of toluene (Section II). The fine adherence of the -methyl group to a linear free-energy relationship (Fig. 37) is apparently typical of the behavior of the other alkyl substituents, as illustrated for the p-ethyl, p-i-propyl, and p-t-butyl groups (Figs. 38-40). Indeed, the data for electrophilic substitution in toluene are better correlated by a linear relationship than are the data for ordinary side-chain reactions of p-tolyl derivatives (Stock and Brown, 1959a). In the Extended Selectivity Treatment (Fig. 25) the side-chain reactions show a slightly greater scatter from the correlation line than the aromatic substitution reactions. 

High anti-diastereoselectivity is observed for several aromatic imines for ortho-substituted aromatic imines the two newly formed stereocenters are created with almost absolute stereocontrol. Aliphatic imines can also be used as substrates and the reaction is readily performed on the gram scale with as little as 0.25 mol% catalyst loading. Furthermore, the Mannich adducts are readily transformed to protected a-hydroxy-/8-amino acids in high yield. The absolute stereochemistry of the Mannich adducts revealed that Et2Zn-linked complex 3 affords Mannich and aldol adducts with the same absolute configuration (2 R). However, the diastereoselectiv-ity of the amino alcohol derivatives is anti, which is opposite to the syn-l,2-diol aldol products. Hence, the electrophiles approach the re face of the zinc enolate in the Mannich reactions and the si face in the aldol reactions. The anti selectivity is... 

A consequence of this delocalisation is that the lone pair is not available for protonation under moderately acidic conditions so, like pyrrole, indole is another weakly basic heterocycle. Another similarity to pyrrole is that being an electron-rich heterocycle indole easily undergoes aromatic electrophilic substitution, and is also rather unstable to oxidative (electron-loss) conditions. However, an important difference emerges here, in that whereas pyrrole preferentially reacts with electrophiles at the C2/C5 positions, indole substitutes selectively at the C3 position. The reasons for this will be discussed later. 

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