Nitration by nitronium salts in organic solvents

SPREAD OF RATES RELATIVE TO BENZENE FOR NITRATION OF ArH BY NOjX (SEE TEXT) 

Kinetic studies on the nitration of nitrobenzene by nitronium borofhioride in the polar solvents sulphuric acid, methane-sulphuric acid, and acetonitrile show the reaction to be first-order in both nitronium salt and aromatic110. With the first two solvents, the rate coefficients are similar for nitration by nitric acid and by the nitronium salts, indicating a common nitrating entity. With acetonitrile the rate coefficients are very much lower, consistent with a much lower concentration of free nitronium ions in this medium and thus with the nitronium salts existing as ion pairs in organic solvents (see Table 25). 

A small isotope effect has been observed in nitration of benzene by nitronium borofluoride in tetramethylene sulphone at 30 °C (kH/kD = 0.86) and this has been attributed to a secondary effect of the change in hybridisation from sp2 to sp3 of the ring carbon during the course of the reaction109. However, naphthalene gives an isotope effect of 1.15 under the same conditions, and anthracene a value of 2.6115. It does not seem at all clear why these relatively unhindered and normally more reactive molecules should give rise to an isotope effect when benzene does not. 

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