Nucleophile-electrophile bonding

Equation 7 is also related to the Ritchie equation 9, applied to nucleophile-electrophile bond-forming reactions. The formal similarity and the apparently unusual constant selectivity common to both suggest the possibility of a closer relation. However, our Nx values are in principle related to identity rates, which as pointed out by Ritchie et al. (23) do not exist for these one-bond-forming reactions and cannot be a part of his N+ values. 

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... 

It should be pointed out the H ion alone is insufficiently powerful to affect disruption of the siloxane bond without the simultaneous action of the F" ion. Consequently sulphuric and nitric acid do not initiate attack, even at temperatures up to 1 000°C. Exceptions to the principle are hydrochloric and hydroiodic acid, which, although satisfying the requirements of simultaneous nucleophilic-electrophilic attack, exert a negligible degrading effect on silica. 

O A hydrogen atom on the electrophile HBr is attacked by tt electrons from the nucleophilic double bond, forming a new C-H bond. This leaves the other carbon atom with a + charge and a vacant p orbital. Simultaneously, two electrons from the H-Br bond move onto bromine, giving bromide anion. 

The reaction begins with an attack on the electrophile, HBr, by the electrons of the nucleophilic tt bond. Two electrons from the 7t bond form a new u bond between the entering hydrogen and an alkene carbon, as shown by the curved arrow at the top of Figure 6.7. The carbocation intermediate that results is itself an electrophile, which can accept an electron pair from nucleophilic Br ion to form a C Brbond and yield a neutral addition product. 

HC1, HBr, and HI add to alkenes by a two-step electrophilic addition mechanism. Initial reaction of the nucleophilic double bond with H+ gives a carbo-cation intermediate, which then reacts with halide ion. Bromine and chlorine add to alkenes via three-membered-ring bromonium ion or chloronium ion intermediates to give addition products having anti stereochemistry. If water is present during the halogen addition reaction, a halohydrin is formed. 

Electron donors (D) and electron acceptors (A) constitute reactant pairs that are traditionally considered with more specific connotations in mind - such as nucleophile/electrophile in bond formation, reductant/oxidant in electron transfer, base/acid in adduct production, and so on. In each case, the chemical transformation is preceded by a rapid (diffusion-controlled) association to form the 1 1 intermolecular complex9 (equation 2). 

Priebe and coworkers [107,178] have attempted to rationalize the product distribution in terms of Pearson s theory of hard and soft acids and bases (HSAB) [179], concluding as a broad generalization that soft bases (S-, N- and C-nucleophiles) form bonds at the softer C-3 electrophilic center, whereas hard bases (O-based nucleophiles) react preferentially at the harder C-l center to give glycosides. They acknowledge that other factors may overrule this interpretation, such as when C-nucleophiles give kinetic C-l-alkylated products whose formation is not reversible. 

Other nucleophile-electrophile pairs for which the pm-disubstituted naphthalene system has been used to monitor potential bonding interactions are illustrated in [35] and [36], The methoxynitrile [35], for example, shows the same sort of evidence for a bonding interaction, marked by a 7° distortion from linearity at the nitrile carbon, in plane, and exactly away from the methoxyl oxygen (Procter et al., 1981) so also does the bipyridyl dinitrile [37] (Baxter et al., 1991). In the unique case of the 8-diazonium quinoline-N-oxide [36] the proximity of a formally negatively charged oxygen induces a distortion from linearity of 10.4° in the diazonium group (Wallis and Dunitz, 1984). 

Weak nucleophile-electrophile interactions (and the donor-acceptor complexes) are considered precursors in aromatic electrophilic substitutions133 and in additions of electrophiles to C=C double bond of olefins the first step (the addition of the electrophile to an electron-rich substrate) is probably the same for both reactions. 

As with the other procedures for the preparation of six-membered heterocyclic systems which proceed via formation of only one ring bond there are relatively few methods which involve formation of a ring bond y to the heteroatom and which can best be classified as [6 + 0] processes rather than [4 + 2], [3 + 3], etc, processes. Of those which can be so represented, however, a number are important processes which are widely used for the synthesis of saturated, partially saturated and aromatic six-membered heterocyclic systems and their benzo derivatives. Mechanistically, the nucleophile —> electrophile approach is by far the most common, but in contrast to the reactions discussed in the previous three sections, radical cyclizations are of considerable utility here. 

The participation of the germanium dimers in nucleophilic/electrophilic or Lewis acid/base reactions has been the subject of several investigations on the Ge(100)-2x1 surface [16,49,255,288,294,313-318]. As for the case of silicon, adsorption of amines has provided an excellent system for probing such reactions. Amines contain nitrogen lone pair electrons that can interact with the electrophilic down atom of a tilted Ge dimer to form a dative bond via a Lewis acid/base interaction (illustrated for trimethylamine at the Si(100)-2 x 1 surface in Ligure 5.17). In the dative bond, the lone pair electrons on nitrogen donate charge to the Ge down atom [49]. 

Chemical bonds are formed by electrons, and formation or breakage of bonds requires the migration of electrons. In broad terms, reactive chemical groups function either as electrophiles or as nucleophiles. Electrophiles are electron-deficient substances that react with electron-rich substances nucleophiles are electron-rich substances that react with electron-deficient substances. The task of a catalyst often is to make a potentially reactive group more reactive by increasing its electrophilic or nucleophilic character. In many cases the simplest way to do this is to add or remove a proton. 

The general reaction sequence has been named more specifically as tandem vicinal dialkylation, nucleophilic-electrophilic carbacondensation,11 dicarbacondensation1213 or conjugate addition-enolate trapping,14 usually in reference to the fact that most of the reaction examples available create two new vicinal carbon-carbon bonds. Many noncarbon nucleophiles and electrophiles also are known, resulting... 

Some striking demonstrations of metal-metal bond lability are provided by cluster rearrangements due to protonation. This is the case for some anionic osmium clusters (cf. Section VI). It involves ligand activation for some tetrairon clusters (51-53). Thus, the clusters 9 and 11 open up upon protonation, and compensation for the lost iron - iron bonds in the products 10 and 12 comes from the bonding between one iron atom and a carbonyl oxygen. The relation of these unusual nucleophile-electrophile interactions to cluster-induced CO transformations is obvious. 

The key step in a cluster expansion reaction is the attachment of the incoming metal unit. Once this has taken place, a sequence of metal-metal bond formations accompanied by ligand eliminations can occur which is the reversal of the cluster unfolding reactions described in Section III,C. In uncontrolled cluster expansions, the first step is the combination of coor-dinatively unsaturated cluster and monometallic units, and the reaction is unlikely to stop at this stage. Under mild conditions the attachment may result from a nucleophile/electrophile combination, the products of which have been isolable in a few cases (see below). More insight into possible... 

It is possible to selectively cleave a Si—C(Cp )bond even in the presence of silicon-transition metal bonds as shown in reactions with nucleophiles, electrophiles and chlorinated hydrocarbons (equations 41 and 42)92,93. 

Molecular orbital theory also predicts that a nucleophile of the sulfide type will bond at the carbon terminus of a conjugated ene carbonyl system that is, the nucleophile will bond with the electrophile in the Michael addition mode of reaction (20). Thus, the reaction of polysulfide dianion with an enone represented by a chalcone may proceed initially in such a manner as shown in Scheme 2, which reproduces one of the several pathways... 

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