Multiplicity of Pathways and Products

The dediazoniation of aromatic diazonium ions has been found to involve a variety of mechanisms. Three typical examples should suffice to show that seemingly slight modifications in the reaction system can lead to entirely different reaction products these suggest fundamentally different dediazoniation mechanisms  

2) In DMSO as solvent and in the presence of nitrobenzene, aryl-de-diazoniation of the unsubstituted benzenediazonium ion leads mainly via meta substitution to 3-nitrobiphenyl, whereas in the case of the 4-nitrobenzenediazonium ion the formation of o- and -substituted products (2,4 -and 4,4 -dinitrobiphenyl) prevails (Gloor et al., 1972). 

3) Dediazoniation of three o-substituted benzenediazonium salts in pyridinium poly(hydrogen fluoride) yields different products depending on the substituent, as Olah and Welch (1975) have found. The 2-methyl derivative gives 2-fluoro-toluene. With the 2-nitrobenzenediazonium ion the main product is 3-nitrofluoro-benzene, the 2-isomer being formed only in small quantities. Finally, the 2-tri-fluoromethyl derivative yields all three isomeric trifluoromethylfluorobenzenes. 

Simple mechanistic considerations easily explain why heterolytic dissociation of the C — N bond in a diazonium ion is likely to occur, as a nitrogen molecule is already preformed in a diazonium ion. On the other hand, homolytic dissociation of the C —N bond is very unlikely from an energetic point of view. In heterolysis N2, a very stable product, is formed in addition to the aryl cation (8.1), which is a metastable intermediate, whereas in homolysis two metastable primary products, the aryl radical (8.2) and the dinitrogen radical cation (8.3) would be formed. This event is unlikely indeed, and as discussed in Section 8.6, homolytic dediazoniation does not proceed by simple homolysis of a diazonium ion. 

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