Nucleophilic atoms

Neutral Lewis bases such as water alcohols and carboxylic acids are much weaker nucleophiles than their conjugate bases When comparing species that have the same nucleophilic atom a negatively charged nucleophile is more reactive than a neutral one... 

As long as the nucleophilic atom is the same the more basic the nucleophile the more reactive it is An alkoxide ion (RO ) is more basic and more nucleophilic than a carboxylate ion (RC02 )... 

A stronger bond between the nucleophilic atom and carbon is reflected in a more stable transition state and therefore a reduced activation energy. Since the 8 2 process is concerted, the strength of the partially formed new bond is reflected in the energy of the transition state. 

Since nucleophilic atoms have nonbonding electrons they can be identified by inspection of Lewis structures. Draw Lewis structures of triraethylamine, methyl fluoride, and phenol. Draw all nonbonding electron pairs and identify all nucleophilic atoms. 

Nucleophilic atoms can also be identified by inspection of electrostatic potential maps. Reactive sites appeal as negative electrostatic potentials. Examine electrostatic potential maps for trimethylamine, methyl fluoride, and phenol. Identify the most nucleophilic atom in each molecule. Are these the same as you identified above using Lewis structures Are all sides of the nucleophilic atoms equally electron rich, or only particular regions ... 

Autocatalysis may arise when the nucleophilic atom of the reagent is bound to a hydrogen atom which is eventually eliminated during the reaction. This occurs with neutral reagents such as primary or secondary amines, thiols, and alcohols. If the displaced group (usually an anion) is a sufficiently weak base, the proton is effectively transferred to any basic reactant. Hence, the best known examples of autocatalysis involve chloro-A-heteroaromatic compounds as the substrates. 

Efforts to establish a theoretical explanation of the reactivity of nucleophilic reagents have centered on correlations with intrinsic electron-donor properties which are the fundamental basis of nucleophilicity. According to Edwards and Pearson, in general, such properties include basicity, polarizability, and the presence of unshared electron pairs on the atom adjacent to the nucleophilic atom of the reagent. When only the first two of these properties are operative, Eq. (8), which was proposed by Edwards, has proved successful in... 

The effects of the nucleophile on aromatic substitution which are pertinent to our main theme of relative reactivity of azine rings and of ring-positions are brought together here. The influence of a nucleophile on relative positional reactivity can arise from its characteristics alone or from its interaction with the ring or with ring-substituents. The effect of different nucleophiles on the rates of reaction of a single substrate has been discussed in terms of polarizability, basicity, alpha effect (lone-pair on the atom adjacent to the nucleophilic atom), and solvation in several reviews and papers. ... 

The rate of reaction of a series of nucleophiles with a single substrate is related to the basicity when the nucleophilic atom is the same and the nucleophiles are closely related in chemical type. Thus, although the rates parallel the basicities of anilines (Tables VII and VIII) as a class and of pyridine bases (Tables VII and VIII) as a class, the less basic anilines are much more reactive. This difference in reactivity is based on a lower energy of activation as is the reactivity sequence piperidine > ammonia > aniline. Further relationships among the nucleophiles found in this work are morpholine vs. piperidine (Table III) methoxide vs. 4-nitrophenoxide (Table II) and alkoxides vs. piperidine (Tables II, III, and VIII). Hydrogen bonding in the transition state and acid catalysis increase the rates of reaction of anilines. Reaction rates of the pyridine bases are decreased by steric hindrance between their alpha hydrogens and the substituents or... 

The conductometric results of Meerwein et al. (1957 b) mentioned above demonstrate that, in contrast to other products of the coupling of nucleophiles to arenediazonium ions, the diazosulfones are characterized by a relatively weak and polarized covalent bond between the p-nitrogen and the nucleophilic atom of the nucleophile. This also becomes evident in the ambidentate solvent effects found in the thermal decomposition of methyl benzenediazosulfone by Kice and Gabrielson (1970). In apolar solvents such as benzene or diphenylmethane, they were able to isolate decomposition products arising via a mechanism involving homolytic dissociation of the N — S bond. In a polar, aprotic solvent (acetonitrile), however, the primary product was acetanilide. The latter is thought to arise via an initial hetero-lytic dissociation and reaction of the diazonium ion with the solvent (Scheme 6-11). 

Regioseleaiivitij A slightly better ivay (than the method on p T137) to work out the regio-chcmlstry of many DieIs-Alder reactions is to identify the most nucleophilic atom on the diene and the most electrophilic atom on the dienophile and join them. 

Ketenes also add to imines in 2 + 2 cycloadditions giving the important g-lactams (20). The reglochemistry is predictable as the nitrogen is the nucleophilic atom in the imine. This is true even in conjugated imine (21) which gives (22) with azidoketene. The azido group can... 

As compared with amides, where oxygen is the most nucleophilic atom, the silyl imidates are more nucleophilic at nitrogen. 

In protic solvents, the nucleophile with larger nucleophilic atom is better. 

A recent study of the reactions of 2,4-dinitrochlorobenzene and of picryl chloride with a series of nucleophiles that are presented in Table 6 shows that a plot (not shown) of log k against the pK values of all the nucleophiles is badly scattered77. Differences of up to 108 are observed for bases with similar pKa values. Part of this scatter is due to deviations that result because different families of nucleophiles (with different nucleophilic atoms) give rise to different Br0nsted correlation lines. Thus, for the reactions of picryl chloride good correlations are observed for a family of oxyanions (ft = 0.38, plot not shown), primary and secondary amines (Figure 4, ft = 0.52) and quinuclidines (Figure 4, P = 0.66). 

Dunitz (180) has collected X-ray crystallographic data for carbonyl compounds that possess nucleophilic atoms in proximity to C=0, and has postulated that such molecules can be used as models for the incipient transition state (reaction coordinate) for the nucleophilic addition to carbonyl compounds. Atrop-isomeric compounds have the potential, by providing a variety of such data, for understanding the incipient transition states. For example, the interaction found in the 1,4-dimethoxy-9-(2-acyloxyethyl)triptycenes (130) can be viewed as a model for SN2 type reactions where the acyloxy group is the leaving group and the methoxy is the nucleophile. In an extreme case of this sort, cyclization actually takes place. Such an example has been reported (181). 

Much is known about the lifetimes of carbocation intermediates of solvolysis, and these data have proven critical in the design of experiments to estimate absolute rate constants for reorganization of ion pairs. Consider reorganization of an ion-pair reaction intermediate that exchanges the positions of the nucleophilic atoms of the leaving group (, Scheme 9) and that occurs in competition with diffusional separation to free ions (k-d) which is much faster than addition of solvent to the ion pair. Ion-pair separation is irreversible and will result in formation of solvolysis reaction products s ). Reorganization of the ion pair will result in formation of isomerization reaction product and the yield of this reaction product will provide a measure of the relative rate constant... 

Reaction of unsaturated 5(4//)-oxazolones with bis(nucleophiles) opens the way for the preparation of diverse heterocyclic compounds depending on the nucleophilic atoms of the reagent. First, if we consider nitrogen-containing bis(nucleo-philes), the reaction of anthranilic acid with unsaturated oxazolones 550 gives rise to substituted 3,l-benzoxazin-4-ones 551 (Scheme 7.174). " °... 

Evidence for the reverse process, donation of electron density from the nucleophilic dimer atom to an electron-deficient molecule, also exists. Konecny and Doren theoretically found that borane (BH3) will dissociatively adsorb on Si(100)-2x1 [293]. While much of the reaction is barrierless, they note an interaction between the boron atom and the nucleophilic atom of the Si dimer during the dissociation process. Cao and Hamers have demonstrated experimentally that the electron density of the nucleophilic dimer atom can be donated to the empty orbital of boron trifluoride (BF3) [278]. XPS on a clean Si(100)-2 x 1 surface at 190 indicates that BF3 dissociates into BF2(a) and F(a) species. However, when BF3 is exposed on a Si(100)-2 x 1 surface previously covered with a saturation dose of trimethylamine, little B-F dissociation occurs, as evidenced by the photoelectron spectrum. They conclude that BF3 molecularly adsorbs to the nucleophilic dimer atom and DFT calculations indicate that the most energetically favorable product is a surface-mediated donor-acceptor complex (trimethylamine-Si-Si-BF3) as shown in Figure 5.19. 

Even in the strong alkali that favors this reaction, very little of the arsenite will be as the trianion nevertheless, there is evidence that it is this form that is responsible for the reaction (104). The insolubility of many alkyl halides in the necessarily aqueous solution of strong alkali is a limitation on this, so ways around must be found. Further, the R group of R—X should not carry a nucleophilic atom on C-4 or C-5, or else it will attack C-l with expulsion of halide and cyclization. This includes a hydroxy group, since it will be in the nucleophilic -0 form in the alkaline conditions. 

L = CO, ethylene, propene, pent-l-ene, butadiene, H2S, THF, acetone, acetonitrile, nitromethane). The moiety [Re(CO)5] + can also be added to a nucleophilic atom of a coordinated ligand, which provides a systematic way to prepare ligand-bridged complexes,12 for example,... 

Figure 4.74 Examples of nucleophilic metabolites. The small arrow indicates the nucleophilic atom.

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