Hydrogen, electrophilic aromatic substitution

Reduction of arenes by catalytic hydrogenation was described m Section 114 A dif ferent method using Group I metals as reducing agents which gives 1 4 cyclohexadiene derivatives will be presented m Section 1111 Electrophilic aromatic substitution is the most important reaction type exhibited by benzene and its derivatives and constitutes the entire subject matter of Chapter 12... 

Deactivating substituent (Sections 12 11 and 12 13) A group that when present in place of hydrogen causes a particular reaction to occur more slowly The term is most often ap plied to the effect of substituents on the rate of electrophilic aromatic substitution... 

Electrophilic aromatic substitution (Section 12 1) Fundamen tal reaction type exhibited by aromatic compounds An electrophilic species (E" ) attacks an aromatic ring and re places one of the hydrogens... 

Nitration (Section 12 3) Replacement of a hydrogen by an —NO2 group The term is usually used in connection with electrophilic aromatic substitution... 

The azo coupling reaction proceeds by the electrophilic aromatic substitution mechanism. In the case of 4-chlorobenzenediazonium compound with l-naphthol-4-sulfonic acid [84-87-7] the reaction is not base-catalyzed, but that with l-naphthol-3-sulfonic acid and 2-naphthol-8-sulfonic acid [92-40-0] is moderately and strongly base-catalyzed, respectively. The different rates of reaction agree with kinetic studies of hydrogen isotope effects in coupling components. The magnitude of the isotope effect increases with increased steric hindrance at the coupler reaction site. The addition of bases, even if pH is not changed, can affect the reaction rate. In polar aprotic media, reaction rate is different with alkyl-ammonium ions. Cationic, anionic, and nonionic surfactants can also influence the reaction rate (27). 

Halogenation (Sections 4.14 and 12.5) Replacement of a hydrogen by a halogen. The most frequently encountered examples are the free-radical halogenation of alkanes and the halogenation of arenes by electrophilic aromatic substitution. 

In a first reaction step the formaldehyde 2 is protonated, which increases its reactivity for the subsequent electrophilic aromatic substitution at the benzene ring. The cationic species 4 thus formed loses a proton to give the aromatic hydroxymethyl derivative 5, which further reacts with hydrogen chloride to yield the chloromethylated product 3 ... 

Mechanistically it is an electrophilic aromatic substitution reaction. The electrophilic species (4—its exact structure is not known) is generated in a reaction of hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen chloride (gas) and a Lewis acid ... 

Another formylation reaction, which is named after Gattermann, is the Gatter-mann-Koch reaction. This is the reaction of an aromatic substrate with carbon monoxide and hydrogen chloride (gas) in the presence of a Lewis acid catalyst. Similar to the Gattermann reaction, the electrophilic agent 9 is generated, which then reacts with the aromatic substrate in an electrophilic aromatic substitution reaction to yield the formylated aromatic compound 10 ... 

The most common reaction of aromatic compounds is electrophilic aromatic substitution. That is, an electrophile reacts with an aromatic ring and substitutes for one of the hydrogens. The reaction is characteristic of all aromatic rings, not just benzene and substituted benzenes. In fact, the ability of a compound to undergo electrophilic substitution is a good test of aromaticity- . 

Before seeing how electrophilic aromatic substitutions occur, let s briefly recall what we said in Chapler 6 about electrophilic alkene additions. When a reagent such as HCl adds to an alkene, the electrophilic hydrogen approaches the p orbitals of the double bond and forms a bond to one carbon, leaving a positive charge at the other carbon. This carbocation intermediate then reacts with the nucleophilic Cl- ion to yield the addition product. 

Electrophilic aromatic substitution (Chapter 16 introduction) A reaction in which an electrophile (E+) reacts with an aromatic ring and substitutes for one of the ring hydrogens. 

Hydro-de-diazoniation seems to be an unnecessary reaction from the synthetic standpoint, as arenediazonium salts are obtained from the respective amines, reagents that are normally synthesized from the hydrocarbon. Some aromatic compounds, however, cannot be synthesized by straightforward electrophilic aromatic substitution examples of these are the 1,3,5-trichloro- and -tribromobenzenes (see below). These simple benzene derivatives are synthesized from aniline via halogenation, diazotization and hydro-de-diazoniation. Furthermore hydro-de-diazoniation is useful for the introduction of a hydrogen isotope in specific positions. 

The replacement of an electrofugic atom or group at a nucleophilic carbon atom by a diazonium ion is called an azo coupling reaction. By far the most important type of such reactions is that with aromatic coupling components, which was discovered by Griess in 1861 (see Sec. 1.1). It is a typical electrophilic aromatic substitution, called an arylazo-de-hydrogenation in the systematic IUPAC nomenclature (IUPAC 1989c, see Sec. 1.2). 

The advantages of the hydrogen exchange as a model electrophilic aromatic substitution are now well recognised and have been emphasised504, 522, 523, so that a very considerable body of data is now to be found in the literature. In order to simplify presentation of this, the data are considered under headings of the acid medium employed for the studies. 

It is clear from the results that there is no kinetic isotope effect when deuterium is substituted for hydrogen in various positions in hydrazobenzene and 1,1 -hydrazonaphthalene. This means that the final removal of hydrogen ions from the aromatic rings (which is assisted either by the solvent or anionic base) in a positively charged intermediate or in a concerted process, is not rate-determining (cf. most electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions47). The product distribution... 

In the discussion of electrophilic aromatic substitution (Chapter 11) equal attention was paid to the effect of substrate structure on reactivity (activation or deactivation) and on orientation. The question of orientation was important because in a typical substitution there are four or five hydrogens that could serve as leaving groups. This type of question is much less important for aromatic nucleophilic substitution, since in most cases there is only one potential leaving group in a molecule. Therefore attention is largely focused on the reactivity of one molecule compared with another and not on the comparison of the reactivity of different positions within the same molecule. 

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