Mechanism aromatic

Systematic studies of the selectivity of electrophilic bromine addition to ethylenic bonds are almost inexistent whereas the selectivity of electrophilic bromination of aromatic compounds has been extensively investigated (ref. 1). This surprising difference arises probably from particular features of their reaction mechanisms. Aromatic substitution exhibits only regioselectivity, which is determined by the bromine attack itself, i.e. the selectivity- and rate-determining steps are identical. 

Further reductions of 17-hydroxy-17-alkynyl-steroids with LiAlH4-AlCl3 to give the 17(20),20-dienes (allenes) confirmed that the reactions proceeded by a stereospecific c/5-5n2 mechanism. Aromatic fluorides were prepared in high yield by treatment of aryl-triazenes with 70% HF in pyridine and 4-fluoro-oestrone methyl ether was prepared by this method. ... 

This led to the introduction of the concepts of inductive and resonance effects and to the establishment of the mechanism of electrophilic aromatic substitution. 

A more detailed classification of chemical reactions will give specifications on the mechanism of a reaction electrophilic aromatic substitution, nucleophilic aliphatic substitution, etc. Details on this mechanism can be included to various degrees thus, nucleophilic aliphatic substitutions can further be classified into Sf l and reactions. However, as reaction conditions such as a change in solvent can shift a mechanism from one type to another, such details are of interest in the discussion of reaction mechanism but less so in reaction classification. 

The mechanism of aromatic sulphonation is complex and may vary, e.g. with the concentration of water or oleum in the acid, the temperature, and the hydrocarbon. One active agent is SO3, and one simplified route may be ... 

The free radical mechanism is confirmed by the fact that if a substituted aromatic hydrocarbon is used in this reaction, the incoming group (derived from the diazotate) may not necessarily occupy the position in the benzene ring normally determined by the substituent present—a characteristic of free radical reactions. 

The mechanism of the reaction is generally considered to proceed by way of carbonhim ions (alkyl cations) which attack the aromatic nucleus ... 

The mechanism of the aromatic substitution may involve the attack of the dectrophilic NOj" " ion upon the nucleophilic aromatic nucleus to produce the carboniiim ion (I) the latter transfers a proton to the bisulphate ion, the most basic substance in the reaction mixture... 

The halogen carriers or aromatic halogenation catalysts are usually all electrophilic reagents (ferric and aluminium haUdes, etc.) and their function appears to be to increase the electrophilic activity of the halogen. Thus the mechanism for the bromination of benzene in the presence of iron can be repre-sfflited by the following scheme ... 

The mechanism of aromatic aulphonation may be similar to that previously described for nitration and halogenation, involving attack of the electrophilic... 

In general, benzoylation of aromatic amines finds less application than acetylation in preparative work, but the process is often employed for the identification and characterisation of aromatic amines (and also of hydroxy compounds). Benzoyl chloride (Section IV, 185) is the reagent commonly used. This reagent is so slowly hydrolysed by water that benzoylation can be carried out in an aqueous medium. In the Schotten-Baumann method of benzoylation the amino compound or its salt is dissolved or suspended in a slight excess of 8-15 per cent, sodium hydroxide solution, a small excess (about 10-15 per cent, more than the theoretical quantity) of benzoyl chloride is then added and the mixture vigorously shaken in a stoppered vessel (or else the mixture is stirred mechanically). Benzoylation proceeds smoothly and the sparingly soluble benzoyl derivative usually separates as a solid. The sodium hydroxide hydrolyses the excess of benzoyl chloride, yielding sodium benzoate and sodium chloride, which remain in solution ... 

The mechanism of the reaction between aromatic aldehydes and esters probably involves the intermediate formation of an aldol (hence the name— Claisen aldol condensation) ... 

This is an example of the Doebner synthesis of quinoline-4-carboxylic acids (cinchoninic acids) the reaction consists in the condensation of an aromatic amine with pyruvic acid and an aldehj de. The mechanism is probably similar to that given for the Doebner-Miller sj nthesis of quinaldiiie (Section V,2), involving the intermediate formation of a dihydroquinoline derivative, which is subsequently dehydrogenated by the Schiff s base derived from the aromatic amine and aldehyde. 

The observation already discussed ( 2.2, 2.3, 2.4) of nitrations, in concentrated and aqueous mineral acids and in pure nitric acid, which depend on the first power of the concentration of the aromatic compound, does not help much in elucidating the mechanisms of nitrations under these conditions. In contrast, the observation of zeroth-order... 

The effect of nitrous acid on the nitration of mesitylene in acetic acid was also investigated. In solutions containing 5-7 mol 1 of nitric acid and < c. 0-014 mol of nitrous acid, the rate was independent of the concentration of the aromatic. As the concentration of nitrous acid was increased, the catalysed reaction intervened, and superimposed a first-order reaction on the zeroth-order one. The catalysed reaction could not be made sufficiently dominant to impose a truly first-order rate. Because the kinetic order was intermediate the importance of the catalysed reaction was gauged by following initial rates, and it was shown that in a solution containing 5-7 mol 1 of nitric acid and 0-5 mol 1 of nitrous acid, the catalysed reaction was initially twice as important as the general nitronium ion mechanism. 

Dewar and his co-workers, as mentioned above, investigated the reactivities of a number of polycyclic aromatic compounds because such compounds could provide data especially suitable for comparison with theoretical predictions ( 7.2.3). This work was extended to include some compounds related to biphenyl. The results were obtained by successively compounding pairs of results from competitive nitrations to obtain a scale of reactivities relative to that of benzene. Because the compounds studied were very reactive, the concentrations of nitric acid used were relatively small, being o-i8 mol 1 in the comparison of benzene with naphthalene, 5 x io mol 1 when naphthalene and anthanthrene were compared, and 3 x io mol 1 in the experiments with diphenylamine and carbazole. The observed partial rate factors are collected in table 5.3. Use of the competitive method in these experiments makes them of little value as sources of information about the mechanisms of the substitutions which occurred this shortcoming is important because in the experiments fuming nitric acid was used, rather than nitric acid free of nitrous acid, and with the most reactive compounds this leads to a... 

Certain features of the addition of acetyl nitrate to olefins in acetic anhydride may be relevant to the mechanism of aromatic nitration by this reagent. The rapid reaction results in predominantly cw-addition to yield a mixture of the y -nitro-acetate and y5-nitro-nitrate. The reaction was facilitated by the addition of sulphuric acid, in which case the 3rield of / -nitro-nitrate was reduced, whereas the addition of sodium nitrate favoured the formation of this compound over that of the acetate. As already mentioned ( 5.3. i), a solution of nitric acid (c. i 6 mol 1 ) in acetic anhydride prepared at — 10 °C would yield 95-97 % of the nitric acid by precipitation with urea, whereas from a similar solution prepared at 20-25 °C and cooled rapidly to —10 °C only 30% of the acid could be recovered. The difference between these values was attributed to the formation of acetyl nitrate. A solution prepared at room... 

The authors of this work were concerned chiefly with additions to alkenes, and evidence about the mechanism of aromatic nitration arises by analogy. Certain aspects of their work have been repeated to investigate whether the nitration of aromatic compounds shows the same phenomena ( 5-3-6). It was shown that solutions of acetyl nitrate in acetic anhydride were more powerful nitrating media for anisole and biphenyl than the corresponding solutions of nitric acid in which acetyl nitrate had not been formed furthermore, it appeared that the formation of acetyl nitrate was faster when 95-98% nitric acid was used than when 70 % nitric acid was used. 

The observation of nitration at a rate independent of the concentration and the nature of the aromatic means only that the effective nitrating species is formed slowly in a step which does not involve the aromatic. The fact that the rates of zeroth-order nitration under comparable conditions in solutions of nitric acid in acetic acid, sulpholan and nitromethane differed by at most a factor of 50 indicated that the slow step in these three cases was the same, and that the solvents had no chemical involvement in this step. The dissimilarity in the rate between these three cases and nitration with acetyl nitrate in acetic anhydride argues against a common mechanism, and indeed it is not required from evidence about zeroth-order rates alone that in the latter solutions the slow step should involve the formation of the nitronium ion. 

The evidence outlined strongly suggests that nitration via nitrosation accompanies the general mechanism of nitration in these media in the reactions of very reactive compounds.i Proof that phenol, even in solutions prepared from pure nitric acid, underwent nitration by a special mechanism came from examining rates of reaction of phenol and mesi-tylene under zeroth-order conditions. The variation in the initial rates with the concentration of aromatic (fig. 5.2) shows that mesitylene (o-2-0 4 mol 1 ) reacts at the zeroth-order rate, whereas phenol is nitrated considerably faster by a process which is first order in the concentration of aromatic. It is noteworthy that in these solutions the concentration of nitrous acid was below the level of detection (< c. 5 X mol... 

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... 

Melander first sought for a kinetic isotope effect in aromatic nitration he nitrated tritiobenzene, and several other compounds, in mixed acid and found the tritium to be replaced at the same rate as protium (table 6.1). Whilst the result shows only that the hydrogen is not appreciably loosened in the transition state of the rate-determining step, it is most easily understood in terms of the S 2 mechanism with... 

The behaviour of benzene is the datum from which any discussion of aromatic compoimds must start the reactivity of an aromatic compound is its rate of reaction relative to that of benzene when both are taking part in reactions occurring under the same conditions and proceeding by the same mechanism. 

Ten years ago we became interested in the possibility of using nitration as a process with which to study the reactivity of hetero-aromatic compounds towards electrophilic substitution. The choice of nitration was determined by the consideration that its mechanism was probably better imderstood than that of any other electrophilic substitution. Others also were pursuing the same objective, and a considerable amount of information has now been compiled. 

The scope of electrophilic aromatic substitution is quite large both the aromatic com pound and the electrophilic reagent are capable of wide variation Indeed it is this breadth of scope that makes electrophilic aromatic substitution so important Elec trophilic aromatic substitution is the method by which substituted derivatives of benzene are prepared We can gam a feeling for these reactions by examining a few typical exam pies m which benzene is the substrate These examples are listed m Table 12 1 and each will be discussed m more detail m Sections 12 3 through 12 7 First however let us look at the general mechanism of electrophilic aromatic substitution... 

If the Lewis base ( Y ) had acted as a nucleophile and bonded to carbon the prod uct would have been a nonaromatic cyclohexadiene derivative Addition and substitution products arise by alternative reaction paths of a cyclohexadienyl cation Substitution occurs preferentially because there is a substantial driving force favoring rearomatization Figure 12 1 is a potential energy diagram describing the general mechanism of electrophilic aromatic substitution For electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions to... 

Now that we ve outlined the general mechanism for electrophilic aromatic substitution we need only identify the specific electrophile m the nitration of benzene to have a fairly clear idea of how the reaction occurs... 

Figure 12 3 adapts the general mechanism of electrophilic aromatic substitution to the nitration of benzene The first step is rate determining m it benzene reacts with nitro mum ion to give the cyclohexadienyl cation intermediate In the second step the aro maticity of the ring is restored by loss of a proton from the cyclohexadienyl cation... 

Among the variety of electrophilic species present m concentrated sulfuric acid sulfur tnoxide (Figure 12 4) is probably the actual electrophile m aromatic sulfonation We can represent the mechanism of sulfonation of benzene by sulfur tnoxide by the sequence of steps shown m Figure 12 5... 

Complexation of bromine with iron(III) bromide makes bromine more elec trophilic and it attacks benzene to give a cyclohexadienyl intermediate as shown m step 1 of the mechanism (Figure 12 6) In step 2 as m nitration and sulfonation loss of a proton from the cyclohexadienyl cation is rapid and gives the product of electrophilic aromatic substitution... 

Section 12 2 The mechanism of electrophilic aromatic substitution involves two stages attack of the electrophile on the tt electrons of the ring (slow rate determining) followed by loss of a proton to restore the aromaticity of the ring... 

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