Nitration electron transfer

Molybdenum. Molybdenum is a component of the metaHoen2ymes xanthine oxidase, aldehyde oxidase, and sulfite oxidase in mammals (130). Two other molybdenum metaHoen2ymes present in nitrifying bacteria have been characteri2ed nitrogenase and nitrate reductase (131). The molybdenum in the oxidases, is involved in redox reactions. The heme iron in sulfite oxidase also is involved in electron transfer (132). 

One aspect of aromatic nitration that has received attention is the role of charge-transfer and electron-transfer intermediates on the path to the ff-complex intermediate. For... 

Cyclic and acyclic silyl enol ethers can be nitrated with tetranitromethane to give ct-nitro ketones in 64-96% yield fEqs. 2.42 and 2.43. " The mechanism involves the electron transfer from the silyl enol ether to tetranitromethane. A fast homolydc conphng of the resultant cadon radical of silyl enol ether with NO leads tn ct-nitro ketones. Tetranitromethane is a neutral reagent it is commercially available or readdy prepared. " ... 

As discussed in Section 10.3, the system consisting of a diazonium ion and cuprous ions can be used for hydroxy-de-diazoniation at room temperature in the presence of large concentrations of hydrated cupric ions (Cohen et al., 1977 see Schemes 10-7 to 10-9). With (Z)-stilbene-2-diazonium tetrafluoroborate under these conditions, however, the major product of ring closure of the initially formed radical was phenanthrene (64%). When the cupric nitrate was supplemented by silver nitrate the yield increased to 86% phenanthrene. Apparently, the radical undergoes such rapid ring closure that no electron transfer to the cupric ion takes place. 

Both reactions follow simple second-order expressions with A 2(nitrate) = 2.19 + 0.13 l.mole .sec and 2(nitrite) = 0.644 + 0.010 l.mole . sec , both at 25 °C ". In the NOJ reduction, NO is considered to enter the inner sphere of the Re(V) complex rapidly to give [ReCl4(ONO)] which then breaks down to products, following an internal two-electron transfer in the slow step. By analogy, NO is considered to enter the Re(V) complex by displacing H2O rapidly in the nitrite reduction slow internal two-electron transfer to give NO" (or HNO) follows the latter is then consumed by Re(V). 

Fig. 6.9 The catalysts for denitrification. Nitrate is reduced by a molybdenum enzyme while nitrite and oxides of nitrogen are reduced today mainly by copper enzymes. However, there are alternatives, probably earlier iron enzymes. The electron transfer bct complex is common to that in oxidative phosphorylation and similar to the bf complex of photosynthesis, while cytochrome c2 is to be compared with cytochrome c of oxidative phosphorylation. These four processes are linked in energy capture via proton (H+) gradients see Figure 6.8(a) and (b) and the lower parts of Fig. 6.9 which show separately the active site of the all iron NO-reductase, and the active site of cytochrome oxidase (02 reductase).

Having shown that the enol silyl ethers are effective electron donors for the [D, A] complex formation with various electron acceptors, let us now examine the electron-transfer activation (thermal and photochemical) of the donor/ acceptor complexes of tetranitromethane and quinones with enol silyl ethers for nitration and oxidative addition, respectively, via ion radicals as critical reactive intermediates. 

Comments on the thermal nitration of enol silyl ethers with TNM. The strikingly similar color changes that accompany the photochemical and thermal nitration of various enol silyl ethers in Table 2 indicates that the preequilibrium [D, A] complex in equation (15) is common to both processes. Moreover, the formation of the same a-nitroketones from the thermal and photochemical nitrations suggests that intermediates leading to thermal nitration are similar to those derived from photochemical nitration. Accordingly, the differences in the qualitative rates of thermal nitrations are best reconciled on the basis of the donor strengths of various ESEs toward TNM as a weak oxidant in the rate-limiting dissociative thermal electron transfer (kET), as described in Scheme 4.40... 

Various enol silyl ethers and quinones lead to the vividly colored [D, A] complexes described above and the electron-transfer activation within such a donor/acceptor pair can be achieved either via photoexcitation of charge-transfer absorption band (as described in the nitration of ESE with TNM) or via selective photoirradiation of either the separate donor or acceptor.41 (The difference arising in the ion-pair dynamics from varied modes of photoactivation of donor/acceptor pairs will be discussed in detail in a later section.) Thus, actinic irradiation with /.exc > 380 nm of a solution of chloranil and the prototypical cyclohexanone ESE leads to a mixture of cyclohexenone and/or an adduct depending on the reaction conditions summarized in Scheme 5. 

In a similar vein, various electron acceptors yielding anion radicals that undergo rapid unimolecular decomposition also facilitate the efficacy of Scheme 1 by effectively obviating the back-electron transfer. For example, the nitration of enol silyl ether with tetranitromethane (TNM) occurs rapidly (despite an unfavorable redox equilibrium)78 owing to the fast mesolytic fragmentation of the TNM anion radical79 (Scheme 15). 

Moreover, the thermal nitration of various aromatic substrates with different X-PyNO cations shows the strong rate dependence on the acceptor strength of X-PyNO and the aromatic donor strength. This identifies the influence of the HOMO-LUMO gap in the EDA complexes (see Chart 3), and thus provides electron-transfer activation as the viable mechanistic basis for the aromatic nitration. Indeed, the graphic summary in Fig. 18 for toluene nitration depicts the isomeric composition of o-, m- and p-nitrotoluene to be singularly invariant over a wide range of substrate selectivities (k/kQ based on the benzene... 

Aromatic nitrosation with nitrosonium (NO + ) cation - unlike electrophilic nitration with nitronium (NO ) cation - is restricted to very reactive (electron-rich) substrates such as phenols and anilines.241 Electrophilic nitrosation with NO+ is estimated to be about 14 orders of magnitude less effective than nitration with N02+. 242 Such an unusually low reactivity of NO+ toward aromatic donors (as compared to that of NO ) is not a result of the different electron-acceptor strengths of these cationic acceptors since their (reversible) electrochemical reduction potentials are comparable. In order to pinpoint the origin of such a reactivity difference, let us examine the nitrosation reaction in the light of the donor-acceptor association and the electron-transfer paradigm as follows. 

There is — in addition to the use of nitrate for control of anaerobic conditions in sewers — a potential for anoxic treatment in terms of removal of organic matter. The anoxic treatment is an alternative to aerobic treatment. An advantage is that the addition of nitrate is simple compared with the injection of oxygen. However, a NUR value that is of the same order of magnitude as the actual OUR value—compared in units of electrons transferred—is crucial to obtain a relatively high removal rate of organic matter. For this and other reasons it is important to compare aerobic and anoxic transformations (cf. Example 5.5). 

Since electron transfer (log kE) represents the adiabatic counterpart to the photochemical process (hvcr), the triad in (87) is (stoichiometrically) equivalent to that in (63) and its collapse to the Wheland intermediate will lead to nitration products that are the same as those formed in charge-transfer nitration. When such a comparison of electrophilic and charge-transfer nitrations is carried out in quantitative detail, the aromatic donors fall roughly into two categories. 

Finally, we ask, if the reactive triads in Schemes 1 and 19 are common to both electrophilic and charge-transfer nitration, why is the nucleophilic pathway (k 2) apparently not pertinent to the electrophilic activation of toluene and anisole One obvious answer is that the electrophilic nitration of these less reactive [class (ii)] arenes proceeds via a different mechanism, in which N02 is directly transferred from V-nitropyridinium ion in a single step, without the intermediacy of the reactive triad, since such an activation process relates to the more conventional view of electrophilic aromatic substitution. However, the concerted mechanism for toluene, anisole, mesitylene, t-butylbenzene, etc., does not readily accommodate the three unique facets that relate charge-transfer directly to electrophilic nitration, viz., the lutidine syndrome, the added N02 effect, and the TFA neutralization (of Py). Accordingly, let us return to Schemes 10 and 19, and inquire into the nature of thermal (adiabatic) electron transfer in (87) vis-a-vis the (vertical) charge-transfer in (62). 

The electron-transfer mechanism for electrophilic aromatic nitration as presented in Scheme 19 is consistent with the CIDNP observation in related systems, in which the life-time of the radical pair [cf. (87)] is of particular concern (Kaptein, 1975 Clemens et al., 1984, 1985 Keumi et al., 1988 Morkovnik, 1988 Olah et al., 1989 Johnston et al., 1991 Ridd, 1991 Rudakov and Lobachev, 1991). As such, other types of experimental evidence for aromatic cation radicals as intermediates in electrophilic aromatic nitration are to be found only when there is significant competition from rate processes on the timescale of r<10 los. For example, the characteristic C-C bond scission of labile cation radicals is observed only during the electrophilic nitration of aromatic donors such as the dianthracenes and bicumene analogues which produce ArH+- with fragmentation rates of kf> 1010s-1 (Kim et al., 1992a,b). 

Since electrophilic and charge-transfer nitrations are both initiated via the same EDA complex and finally lead to the same array of nitration products, we infer that they share the intermediate stages in common. The strength of this inference rests on the variety of aromatic substrates (with widely differing reactivities and distinctive products) to establish the mechanistic criteria by which the identity of the two pathways are exhaustively tested. On this basis, electrophilic nitration is operationally equivalent to charge-transfer nitration in which electron-transfer activation is the obligatory first step. The extent to which the reactive triad in (90) is subject to intermolecu-lar interactions in the first interval (a few picoseconds) following electron transfer will, it is hoped, further define the mechanistic nuances of dissociative electron transfer in adiabatic and vertical systems (Shaik, 1991 Andrieux et al., 1992), especially when inner-sphere pathways are considered (Kochi, 1992). 

The nitration reagents (NO2 Y) for electrophilic aromatic nitration span a wide range and contain anions Y such as nitric acid (Y = OH-), acetyl nitrate (Y = OAc-), dinitrogen pentoxide (Y = NO3-), nitryl chloride (Y = Cl-), TV-nitropyridinium (Y = pyridine) and tetranitromethane [Y = C(N02)3-]. All reagents contain electron-deficient species which can serve as effective electron acceptors and form electron donor-acceptor (EDA) complexes with electron-rich donors including aromatic hydrocarbons107 (ArH, equation 86). Excitation of the EDA complexes by irradiation of the charge-transfer (CT) absorption band results in full electron transfer (equation 87) to form radical ion... 

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