Nucleophile-substituted carbocation

Step 2 The carbocation formed m step 1 reacts rapidly with a water molecule Water IS a nucleophile This step completes the nucleophilic substitution stage of the mechanism and yields an alkyloxonium ion... 

Primary carbocations are so high m energy that their intermediacy m nucleophilic substitution reactions is unlikely When ethyl bromide undergoes hydrolysis m aqueous formic acid substitution probably takes place by an 8 2 like process m which water is the nucleophile... 

Formation of a racemic product by nucleophilic substitution via a carbocation... 

Additional evidence for carbocation intermediates in certain nucleophilic substitutions comes from observing rearrangements of the kind normally associated with such species For example hydrolysis of the secondary alkyl bromide 2 bromo 3 methylbutane yields the rearranged tertiary alcohol 2 methyl 2 butanol as the only substitution product... 

Illustrate the stereochemistry associated with unimolecular nucleophilic substitution by con structmg molecular models of cis 4 tert butylcyclohexyl bromide its derived carbocation and the alcohols formed from it by hydrolysis under S l conditions... 

Substitution nucleophilic unimolecular(SNl) mechanism (Sec tions 4 9 and 8 8) Mechanism for nucleophilic substitution charactenzed by a two step process The first step is rate determining and is the ionization of an alkyl halide to a carbocation and a halide ion... 

Secondary isotope effects at the position have been especially thoroughly studied in nucleophilic substitution reactions. When carbocations are involved as intermediates, substantial /9-isotope effects are observed. This is because the hyperconjugative stabliliza-... 

The ionization mechanism for nucleophilic substitution proceeds by rate-determining heterolytic dissociation of the reactant to a tricoordinate carbocation (also sometimes referred to as a carbonium ion or carbenium ion f and the leaving group. This dissociation is followed by rapid combination of the highly electrophilic carbocation with a Lewis base (nucleophile) present in the medium. A two-dimensional potential energy diagram representing this process for a neutral reactant and anionic nucleophile is shown in Fig. 

For many secondary sulfonates, nucleophilic substitution seems to be best explained by a concerted mechanism with a high degree of carbocation character at the transition state. This has been described as an exploded transition state. Both the breaking and forming bonds are relatively weak so that the carbon has a substantial positive charge. However, the carbocation per se has no lifetime because bond breaking and fonnadon occur concurrently."... 

Because carbocations are key intermediates in many nucleophilic substitution reactions, it is important to develop a grasp of their structural properties and the effect substituents have on stability. The critical step in the ionization mechanism of nucleophilic substitution is the generation of the tricoordinate carbocation intermediate. For this mechanism to operate, it is essential that this species not be prohibitively high in energy. Carbocations are inherently high-energy species. The ionization of r-butyl chloride is endothermic by 153kcal/mol in the gas phase. ... 

Up to this point in our discussion, we have considered only carbocations in which the cationic carbon can be 5p -hybridized and planar. When this hybridization cannot be achieved, die carbocations are of higher energy. In a classic experiment, Bartlett and Knox demonstrated that the tertiary chloride 1-chloroapocamphane was inert to nucleophilic substitution. Starting material was recovered unchanged even after refluxing for 48 h in ethanolic silver nitrate. The umeactivity of this compound is attributed to the structure of... 

Nucleophilic substitution reactions that occur imder conditions of amine diazotization often have significantly different stereochemisby, as compared with that in halide or sulfonate solvolysis. Diazotization generates an alkyl diazonium ion, which rapidly decomposes to a carbocation, molecular nitrogen, and water ... 

Certain nucleophilic substitution reactions that normally involve carbocations can take place at norbomyl bridgeheads (though it is not certain that carbocations are actually involved in all cases) if the leaving group used is of the type that cannot function as a nucleophile (and thus come back) once it has gone, for example. 

The mechanistic aspects of nucleophilic substitution reactions were treated in detail in Chapter 4 of Part A. That mechanistic understanding has contributed to the development of nucleophilic substitution reactions as important synthetic processes. Owing to its stereospecificity and avoidance of carbocation intermediates, the Sw2 mechanism is advantageous from a synthetic point of view. In this section we discuss... 

In this section, the emphasis is on carbocation reactions that modify the carbon skeleton, including carbon-carbon bond formation, rearrangements, and fragmentation reactions. The fundamental structural and reactivity characteristics of carbocations toward nucleophilic substitution were explored in Chapter 4 of Part A. 

Organic halides play a fundamental role in organic chemistry. These compounds are important precursors for carbocations, carbanions, radicals, and carbenes and thus serve as an important platform for organic functional group transformations. Many classical reactions involve the reactions of organic halides. Examples of these reactions include the nucleophilic substitution reactions, elimination reactions, Grignard-type reactions, various transition-metal catalyzed coupling reactions, carbene-related cyclopropanations reactions, and radical cyclization reactions. All these reactions can be carried out in aqueous media. 

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