Nucleophilic substitution, acid catalysis

There is an important difference in the regiochemistry of ring opening reactions of epoxides depending on the reaction conditions Unsymmetncally substituted epoxides tend to react with anionic nucleophiles at the less hindered carbon of the ring Under conditions of acid catalysis however the more highly substituted carbon is attacked... 

As we ve just seen nucleophilic ring opening of ethylene oxide yields 2 substituted derivatives of ethanol Those reactions involved nucleophilic attack on the carbon of the ring under neutral or basic conditions Other nucleophilic ring openings of epoxides like wise give 2 substituted derivatives of ethanol but either involve an acid as a reactant or occur under conditions of acid catalysis... 

Nucleophilic Ring Opening. Opening of the ethyleneimine ring with acid catalysis can generally be accompHshed by the formation of an iatermediate ayiridinium salt, with subsequent nucleophilic substitution on the carbon atom which loses the amino group. In the foUowiag, R represents a Lewis acid, usually A = the nucleophile. 

The relative importance of the potential catalytic mechanisms depends on pH, which also determines the concentration of the other participating species such as water, hydronium ion, and hydroxide ion. At low pH, the general acid catalysis mechanism dominates, and comparison with analogous systems in which the intramolecular proton transfer is not available suggests that the intramolecular catalysis results in a 25- to 100-fold rate enhancement At neutral pH, the intramolecular general base catalysis mechanism begins to operate. It is estimated that the catalytic effect for this mechanism is a factor of about 10. Although the nucleophilic catalysis mechanism was not observed in the parent compound, it occurred in certain substituted derivatives. 

Carbonyl reactions are extremely important in chemistry and biochemistry, yet they are often given short shrift in textbooks on physical organic chemistry, partly because the subject was historically developed by the study of nucleophilic substitution at saturated carbon, and partly because carbonyl reactions are often more difhcult to study. They are generally reversible under usual conditions and involve complicated multistep mechanisms and general acid/base catalysis. In thinking about carbonyl reactions, 1 find it helpful to consider the carbonyl group as a (very) stabilized carbenium ion, with an O substituent. Then one can immediately draw on everything one has learned about carbenium ion reactivity and see that the reactivity order for carbonyl compounds ... 

Chromanoxylium cation 4 preferably adds nucleophiles in 8a-position producing 8a-substituted tocopherones 6, similar in structure to those obtained by radical recombination between C-8a of chromanoxyl 2 and coreacting radicals (Fig. 6.4). Addition of a hydroxyl ion to 4, for instance, results in a 8a-hydroxy-tocopherone, which in a subsequent step gives the /zara-tocopherylquinone (7), the main (and in most cases, the only) product of two-electron oxidation of tocopherol in aqueous media. A second interesting reaction of chromanoxylium cation 4 is the loss of aproton at C-5a, producing the o-QM 3. This reaction is mostly carried out starting from tocopherones 6 or /zora-tocopherylquinone (7) under acidic catalysis, so that chromanoxylium 4 is produced in the first step, followed by proton elimination from C-5a. In the overall reaction of a tocopherone 6, a [ 1,4] -elimination has occurred. The central species in the oxidation chemistry of a-tocopherol is the o-QM 3, which is discussed in detail subsequently. 

E-(P-Alkylvinyl)phenyliodonium salts react with tetra-n-butylammonium halides to yield the correspondingly substituted Z-haloethenes (80-100% for chloro-, bromo- and iodo-derivatives) [41], In contrast, in the corresponding reaction with Z-(2-benzenesulphonyl-ethenyl)phenyliodonium salts, nucleophilic substitution occurs with retention of configuration to yield the Z-2-benzenesulphonyl-l-haloethenes [42], The ammonium fluorides fail to yield the fluoroethenes, but produce the ethynes by simple elimination [41]. Where carboxylic acids have low solubility in organic solvents, their conversion into the acid chlorides is frequently difficult. Phase-transfer catalysis not only allows the conversion to be effected rapidly, it also results in high yields of a wide range of acid chlorides [43]. 

Keywords Absolute configuration, Amines, Amino acids, Carbenes, Cascade reactions, 2-chloro-2-cyclopropylideneacetates. Combinatorial libraries. Cycloadditions, Cyclobutenes, Cyclopropanes, Diels-Alder reactions. Heterocycles, Michael additions. Nitrones, Nucleophilic substitutions, Peptidomimetics, Palladium catalysis. Polycycles, Solid phase synthesis, Spiro compounds. Thiols... 

---