Nucleophiles partial rate factors

Substituents have a much smaller effect than in electrophilic or nucleophilic substitution hence the partial rate factors (see p. 690) are not great. Partial rate factors for a few groups are given in Table 14.2. ... 

Not all radical aromatic substitutions are as immune to polar effects as is attack by phenyl. Some radicals reveal marked electrophilic or nucleophilic character. Oxygen-centered radicals, for example, are electrophilic, as would be expected if there is substantial polar contribution to the transition state. Table 9.13 lists partial rate factors for substitution by benzoyl radicals note that the orientation and activation trends found in typical electrophilic substitutions have begun to appear, but are still modest compared with the dramatic effects shown in Table 9.12 for a true heterolytic substitution.179... 

The significance of these results for differences in reactivities of nucleophiles is that, despite the unfavorable relative equilibrium constants, Me2S is more reactive toward the quinone methide than chloride ion by a factor of nearly 3000. This mismatch of rate and equilibrium effects is summarized in Scheme 35. It must imply (a) that there is a relatively long partial bond between sulfur and carbon in the transition state so that the unfavorable steric and electrostatic effects are not developed and (b) that the favorable carbon-sulfur bonding interaction is well developed despite the long bonding distance. 

There exists substantial evidence that in reactions that involve oxyanions or amines as bases or as nucleophiles, their partial desolvation, as they enter the transition state, typically has made greater progress than bond formation. In the context of the PNS, this partial loss of solvation represents the early loss of a reactant stabilizing factor and hence reduces the intrinsic rate constant. As discussed at some length in our 1992 chapter,4 for strongly basic oxyanions this desolvation effect often manifests itself in terms of negative deviations from Br Ansted plots and/or in abnormally low p or pnuc values.58,188 In fact, a number of cases have been reported where the pnuc value was close to zero or... 

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