Lewis acid/base basicity

The chemistry of Lewis acid-base adducts (electron-pair donor-acceptor complexes) has stimulated the development of measures of the Lewis basicity of solvents. Jensen and Persson have reviewed these. Gutmann defined the donor number (DN) as the negative of the enthalpy change (in kcal moL ) for the interaction of an electron-pair donor with SbCls in a dilute solution in dichloroethane. DN has been widely used to correlate complexing data, but side reactions can lead to inaccurate DN values for some solvents. Maria and Gal measured the enthalpy change of this reaction... 

Present understanding of Lewis acidity and basicity is based mainly on the A and B type classification of metal ions of Ahrland, Chatt,... 

Steric interactions between bulky substituents such as t-Bu, leading to larger C-E-C bond angles, obviously affect the Lewis basicity caused by the increased -character of the electron lone pair. However, the strength of the Lewis acid-base interaction within an adduct as expressed by its dissociation enthalpy does not necessarily reflect the Lewis acidity and basicity of the pure fragments, because steric (repulsive) interactions between the substituents bound to both central elements may play a contradictory role. In particular, adducts containing small group 13/15 elements are very sensitive to such interactions as was shown for amine-borane and -alane adducts... 

In this chapter, we have discussed the application of metal oxides as catalysts. Metal oxides display a wide range of properties, from metallic to semiconductor to insulator. Because of the compositional variability and more localized electronic structures than metals, the presence of defects (such as comers, kinks, steps, and coordinatively unsaturated sites) play a very important role in oxide surface chemistry and hence in catalysis. As described, the catalytic reactions also depend on the surface crystallographic structure. The catalytic properties of the oxide surfaces can be explained in terms of Lewis acidity and basicity. The electronegative oxygen atoms accumulate electrons and act as Lewis bases while the metal cations act as Lewis acids. The important applications of metal oxides as catalysts are in processes such as selective oxidation, hydrogenation, oxidative dehydrogenation, and dehydrochlorination and destructive adsorption of chlorocarbons. 

Figure 29 Structure of a Lewis acid-base adduct containing Lewis basic Cp Ga.

The mineral surface may be considered as a solid source of Lewis and/or BrfSnsted acidity and the reactive sites S as localized acidic or basic functional groups. Reactions involving such sites may be understood in terms of Lewis acid/base or BrfSnsted acid/base interactions ( 1, 5, 6, 8, 38). As the acidity of the reactive sites increases, increasingly weak bases are neutralized and reactive surface complexes (A S) may be formed. The term "acidity" is often used in the broad sense of the word, including both BrjSnsted and... 

The Lewis acid-base reaction leading to complex formation910 has been recently11 considered in relation to the role of solvation effects. Many scales of thermodynamic parameters have been suggested. The concept of donor number (DN) was proposed by Gutmann12, and defined as the AH (kcalmol-1) for the interaction of a basic solvent with SbCL in 1,2-dichloromethane at room temperature ... 

The effects of Lewis acids on the stereoselectivities can also be understood in terms of orbital interactions. The variation in charge at the respective basic centre gives rise to a change in the magnitude of the orbital coefficients of the entire interacting molecular orbital. These effects are visualized by the HOMO and LUMO representations of the Lewis acid-base complex of acrolein and trifluoroborane (Figure 3), and in an even more extreme case by the HOMO and LUMO representations of one of the simplest dienophile-Lewis acid complexes protonated acrolein92,93. 

It is hoped that the terms donor and acceptor strengths will be reserved for inferences made about Lewis acid-base properties from data in the gas phase or poorly solvating solvents. This is to be contrasted with the more complex phenomena contributing to acidity and basicity. 

The roles of carbocations in commercially important hydrocarbon transformations are still not perfectly understood. The same can be said for carbocations in biological systems. Significant questions concerning reactivity still need to be explained. Why do so many reactions of carbocations show constant selectivity, in violation of the reactivity-selectivity principle Is it possible to develop a unified scale of elec-trophilicity-nucleophilicity, in particular one that incorporates these parameters into the general framework of Lewis acidity and basicity. Finally, quite sophisticated synthetic transformations are being developed that employ carbocations, based upon insights revealed by the mechanistic studies. 

Owing to the strength of the B—F bond, die BF3 complexes are of widespread use as model compounds, for investigating Lewis acid-base interactions and the nature of the donor-acceptor bond. BF3 is frequently employed as a standard Lewis acid, for the quantitative characterization of the Lewis basicity of donor mojecules.62,63 The gas-phase equilibrium constants for some BF3 complexes are shown in Table 5. 

The hypothesized delocalization of lone pair electrons in the above silicon compounds is supported by the lowered basicity of the silyl compounds as compared to the corresponding carbon compounds. This reduced basicity is contrary to that expected on the basis of electronegativity effects operating through the a system since silicon is less electronegative than carbon. It is consistent with an internal Lewis acid-base interaction between the nitrogen and oxygen lone pairs and empty acceptor d orbitals on the silicon. Experimentally this reduced basicity is shown by the absence of disiioxane adducts with BF3 and BO ... 

Using contact angle (see Basic Protocol 4), the quantitative determination on the basis of the Lifshiz-van der Waals and electron donor-acceptor of Lewis acid-base interactions contributing to surface tension was extended to proteins (van Oss et ah, 1981). Despite its relative simplicity, the method has not gained popularity in the application to food proteins directly, probably because of the lack of similarity with proteins in solutions as this method uses a semi-dried form of proteins. However, investigation of the quality of packaging material, such as permeation and absorption, may... 

These processes could contribute a damaging amount of SO, to the atmosphere if precautions were not taken to remove it. Limestone and sand, which are added to the mixture, form a molten slag that removes many of the impurities as well as the S02. For example, calcium oxide (a basic oxide) from the limestone reacts with the SOz (an acidic oxide) to produce calcium sulfite in a Lewis acid-base reaction ... 

More recently, a quantitative scale for Lewis acidity based on fluoride ion affinities was calculated using ab initio calculations at the MP2/B2 level of theory.26 Due to its high basicity and small size, the fluoride ion reacts essentially with all Lewis acids thus the fluoride affinity (or reaction enthalpy) may be considered as a good measure for the strength of a Lewis acid. An abbreviated pF scale is given in Table 1.3. This scale was used recently by Christe and Dixon112 for estimating the stability of salts of complex fluoro anions and cations. The pF value represents the fluoride affinity in kcal mol 1 divided by 10. 

It is quite difficult to tell whether in these Lewis acid base adducts the hydrogen atom of the hydroxyl groups still is situated on the oxygen atom or has migrated to the basic center of the guest molecule or is somewhat in between, as exemplified in Eq. (5) with an amine. 

Surfactant-based synthesis of mesoporous metal oxides and metal sulfides emerged about four years after the initial report of MCM-41 [21-36]. High surface area and thermally robust mesoporous metal oxides and sulfides represent a new class of materials with diverse opportunities for the development of improved fuel and solar cells, batteries, membranes, chemical delivery vehicles, heavy metal sponges, sensors, magnetic devices and new catalysts. All of these applications could benefit from tailorable Bronsted and Lewis acidity and basicity, flexible oxidation states, and tunable electronic, optical and magnetic properties. 

It is possible to prepare the neutral ionic liquids by mixing the equimolar amounts of the organic chloride and AICI3. When a metal salt is added to a neutral ionic liquid, the metal salt will act as either a Lewis base or acid to affect the Lewis acidity or basicity of the ionic liquid. Based on this, excess LiCl, NaCl, or HCl is added to maintain the neutrality of the ionic liquid. 

Finally, an attempt was made to establish a measure of the electron-donating and electron-accepting power of organic solvents by means of infrared [72, 73] and F1 NMR measurements [73], Further empirical Lewis acid and base parameters will be discussed in Chapters 7.2... 7.5. A thorough and critical compilation of empirical solvent scales, including Lewis acidity and basicity scales, has recently been made for non-FlBD solvents [342],... 

Solvents can be classified as EPD or EPA according to their chemical constitution and reaction partners [65]. However, not all solvents come under this classification since e.g. aliphatic hydrocarbons possess neither EPD nor EPA properties. An EPD solvent preferably solvates electron-pair acceptor molecules or ions. The reverse is true for EPA solvents. In this respect, most solute/solvent interactions can be classified as generalized Lewis acid/base reactions. A dipolar solvent molecule will always have an electron-rich or basic site, and an electron-poor or acidic site. Gutmann introduced so-called donor numbers, DN, and acceptor numbers, AN, as quantitative measures of the donor and acceptor strengths [65] cf. Section 2.2.6 and Tables 2-3 and 2-4. Due to their coordinating ability, electron-pair donor and acceptor solvents are, in general, good ionizers cf. Section 2.6. 

---