Hydrophobic interaction reaction rate

Breslow studied the dimerisation of cyclopentadiene and the reaction between substituted maleimides and 9-(hydroxymethyl)anthracene in alcohol-water mixtures. He successfully correlated the rate constant with the solubility of the starting materials for each Diels-Alder reaction. From these relations he estimated the change in solvent accessible surface between initial state and activated complex " . Again, Breslow completely neglects hydrogen bonding interactions, but since he only studied alcohol-water mixtures, the enforced hydrophobic interactions will dominate the behaviour. Recently, also Diels-Alder reactions in dilute salt solutions in aqueous ethanol have been studied and minor rate increases have been observed Lubineau has demonstrated that addition of sugars can induce an extra acceleration of the aqueous Diels-Alder reaction . Also the effect of surfactants on Diels-Alder reactions has been studied. This topic will be extensively reviewed in Chapter 4. 

What is the effect of water on the rate and selectivity of the Lewis-acid catalysed Diels-Alder reaction, when compared to oiganic solvents Do hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions also influence the Lewis-acid catalysed process Answers to these questions will be provided in Chapter 2. 

The relative extents to which enforced hydrophobic interactions and hydrogen bonding influence the rate of the Diels-Alder reaction depends on the particular reaction under study". 

Pairwise hydrophobic interactions can be used to alter the reactivity of organic molecules in water. For instance, the rate of hydrolysis reactions may be influenced significantly by the presence of hydrophobic cosolutes. The effect on reactivity has been analysed by comparirg the interactions between initial state and cosolute with those between transition state and cosolute. ... 

The rate of the Lewis-acid catalysed Diels-Alder reaction in water has been compared to that in other solvents. The results demonstrate that the expected beneficial effect of water on the Lewis-acid catalysed reaction is indeed present. However, the water-induced acceleration of the Lewis-add catalysed reaction is not as pronounced as the corresponding effect on the uncatalysed reaction. The two effects that underlie the beneficial influence of water on the uncatalysed Diels-Alder reaction, enforced hydrophobic interactions and enhanced hydrogen bonding of water to the carbonyl moiety of 1 in the activated complex, are likely to be diminished in the Lewis-acid catalysed process. Upon coordination of the Lewis-acid catalyst to the carbonyl group of the dienophile, the catalyst takes over from the hydrogen bonds an important part of the activating influence. Also the influence of enforced hydrophobic interactions is expected to be significantly reduced in the Lewis-acid catalysed Diels-Alder reaction. Obviously, the presence of the hydrophilic Lewis-acid diminished the nonpolar character of 1 in the initial state. 

In contrast to 1, isomeric p-nitrophenyl nicotinate shows almost no catalysis. Thus, it is clear that substrate coordination to the metal ion complex plays the critical role for an enormous rate enhancement. The lipophilic ester (R = C5Hn) also undergoes a large rate enhancement indicating the importance of substrate binding into the micellar phase by hydrophobic interaction. A large rate enhancement can also be seen in lipophilic esters which lack the metal coordination site as given below with the enantioselective micellar reactions (Table 9, 10). 

Water has physical hemical properties that are very different from those of other solvents [1] and its role in enhancing the reactivity and selectivity of some organic reactions is still a debated question. Recent experimental studies [3e, 9] and computer simulations [10] seem to indicate, at least with respect to the rate enhancement of aqueous Diels Alder reactions, that the main effects are due to the enforced hydrophobic interactions and hydrogen bond interactions. 

The Diels-Alder reaction is one of the most important methods used to form cyclic structures and is one of the earliest examples of carbon-carbon bond formation reactions in aqueous media.21 Diels-Alder reactions in aqueous media were in fact first carried out in the 1930s, when the reaction was discovered,22 but no particular attention was paid to this fact until 1980, when Breslow23 made the dramatic observation that the reaction of cyclopentadiene with butenone in water (Eq. 12.1) was more than 700 times faster than the same reaction in isooctane, whereas the reaction rate in methanol is comparable to that in a hydrocarbon solvent. Such an unusual acceleration of the Diels-Alder reaction by water was attributed to the hydrophobic effect, 24 in which the hydrophobic interactions brought together the two nonpolar groups in the transition state. 

In the course of our investigations to develop new chiral catalysts and catalytic asymmetric reactions in water, we focused on several elements whose salts are stable and behave as Lewis acids in water. In addition to the findings of the stability and activity of Lewis adds in water related to hydration constants and exchange rate constants for substitution of inner-sphere water ligands of elements (cations) (see above), it was expected that undesired achiral side reactions would be suppressed in aqueous media and that desired enanti-oselective reactions would be accelerated in the presence of water. Moreover, besides metal chelations, other factors such as hydrogen bonds, specific solvation, and hydrophobic interactions are anticipated to increase enantioselectivities in such media. 

The pseudothermodynamic analysis of solvent elfects in 1-PrOH-water mixtures over the whole composition range (shown in Figure 7.3) depicts a combination of thermodynamic transfer parameters for diene and dienophile with isobaric activation parameters that allows for a distinction between solvent elfects on reactants (initial state) and on the activated complex. The results clearly indicate that the aqueous rate accelerations are heavily dominated by initial-state solvation effects. It can be concluded that for Diels-Alder reactions in water the causes of the acceleration involve stabilization of the activated complex by enforced hydrophobic interactions and by hydrogen bonding to water (Table 7.1, Figure 7.4). °... 

In the case of enzymes, the rate of the catalysed reaction increases regularly with increasing temperature. However, the probability of the unfolding of the threedimensional conformation of the protein molecule also increases, as there is more energy available to split the non-covalent interactions between side chains. In some cases it has been demonstrated that such noncovalent interactions play a dominant role in the stability of the native conformation. For example, Brosnan, Kelly and Fogarty (1992) demonstrated that the irreversible thermoinactivation of -amylase of Bacillus stearothermophilus at 90°C is related to changes of the hydrophobic interactions in the molecule. 

What occurs when two hydrophobic molecules, susceptible to reaction, are put together in aqueous solution Due to the hydrophobic interaction, they have a tendency to aggregate, but this association is not sufficient to explain the rate enhancement. Noteworthy is the high surface tension of water (72 dynes/cm), a consequence of its high c.e.d. (550 cal/cm or 22000 atm), which tends to induce a diminution of the surface of contact between hydrophobic and water molecules. This process is facilitated by a decrease of the volume of the reactants along the reaction coordinate. 

A particular example is the Diels-Alder reaction,21,22 which attracted interest after a publication23 reporting large rate enhancement and a change in stereochemistry in water for the reaction between cyclopentadiene and methyl vinyl ketone. Hydrophobic interactions between the reacting molecules and hydrogen bonding of water to the carbonyl moiety were found to play the major role in the observed phenomena.14,24,25... 

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