Nucleophilic substitution alkyl bromides

The mechanism for the reactions with phosphorus halides can be illustrated using phosphorus tribromide. Initial reaction between the alcohol and phosphorus tribromide leads to a trialkyl phosphite ester by successive displacements of bromide. The reaction stops at this stage if it is run in the presence of an amine which neutralizes the hydrogen bromide that is formed.9 If the hydrogen bromide is not neutralized the phosphite ester is protonated and each alkyl group is successively converted to the halide by nucleophilic substitution by bromide ion. The driving force for cleavage of the C—O bond is the... 

Ammonium salts with two different alkyl chains were prepared directly via subsequent alkylations of dimethylamine with primary bromides and crystallization. Commercial hexadecyl-methylamine can be conveniently applied in the same way in order to convey functionality to cationic synkinons. A recent example describes subsequent alkylations with a small functional and a long-chain primary bromide (Scheme 2.4). A-acylated / -phenylenediamine was also alkylated at the second nitrogen atom which had two different alkyl chains, with or without extra functionality . After deacylation, this head group can be diazotized or coupled oxidatively with various heterocycles in water (Scheme 2.4). Photoactive and coloured membrane surfaces are thus obtained. Phenylene-diamine, pyridine and in particular A-methyl-4,4-bipyridinium chloride are relatively weak nucleophiles. Substitution of bromides is slow and the more reactive iodides can rarely be obtained commercially, but the selection of nitromethanes as solvent for bromide substitution is of great help as well as the addition of sodium iodide to enforce a Finkelstein reaction or a combination of both. 

Alkoxides are useful reagents they are used as powerful bases (stronger than hydroxide). Sodium t-butoxide and ethyl bromide (CH3CH2Br) are mixed together to give CeHi O. This reaction illustrates nucleophilic substitution. Ethyl bromide is an alkyl halide, and nucleophilic substitution is typical of such organic compounds. Nucleophilic substitution may be generalized as... 

The order of alkyl halide reactivity in nucleophilic substitutions is the same as their order m eliminations Iodine has the weakest bond to carbon and iodide is the best leaving group Alkyl iodides are several times more reactive than alkyl bromides and from 50 to 100 times more reactive than alkyl chlorides Fluorine has the strongest bond to car bon and fluonde is the poorest leaving group Alkyl fluorides are rarely used as sub states m nucleophilic substitution because they are several thousand times less reactive than alkyl chlorides... 

There are very large differences m the rates at which the various kinds of alkyl halides— methyl primary secondary or tertiary—undergo nucleophilic substitution As Table 8 2 shows for the reaction of a series of alkyl bromides... 

Neither formic acid nor water is very nucleophilic and so 8 2 substitution is suppressed The relative rates of hydrolysis of a group of alkyl bromides under these conditions are presented m Table 8 5... 

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... 

Given the molecular formula CgHnBr construct a molecular model of the isomer that is a pnmary alkyl bromide yet relatively unreactive toward bimolecular nucleophilic substitution... 

In addition to bromides and iodides, the reaction has been successfully extended to chlorides,163 triflates,164 and nonafluorobutanesulfonates (nonaflates).165 These reaction conditions permit substitution in both electron-poor and electron-rich aryl systems by a variety of nitrogen nucleophiles, including alkyl or aryl amines and heterocycles. These reactions proceed via a catalytic cycle involving Pd(0) and Pd(II) intermediates. 

In basic aqueous media, a kinetic study of the reaction between stannate(II) ions and alkyl halide shows that mono- and disubstituted organotin compounds are formed (Eq. 6.12a).27 The monosubstituted organotin compound is obtained after a nucleophilic substitution catalyzed by a complexation between the tin(II) and the halide atom. The disubstituted compound results from an electrophilic substitution coupled with a redox reaction on a complex between the monosubstituted organotin compound and the stannate(II) ion. Stannate(IV) ions prevent the synthesis of the disubstituted compound by complexation. Similarly, when allyl bromide and tin were stirred in D2O at 60° C, allyltin(II) bromide was formed first. This was followed by further reaction with another molecule of allyl bromide to give diallyltin(IV) dibromide (Eq. 6.12b).28... 

In the first systematic study on nucleophilic substitutions of chiral halides by Group IV metal anions, Jensen and Davis showed that (S )-2-bromobutane is converted to the (R)-2-triphenylmetal product with predominant inversion at the carbon center (Table 5)37. Replacement of the phenyl substituents by alkyl groups was possible through sequential brominolysis and reaction of the derived stannyl bromides with a Grignard reagent (equation 16). Subsequently, Pereyre and coworkers employed the foregoing Grignard sequence to prepare several trialkyl(s-butyl)stannanes (equation 17)38. They also developed an alternative synthesis of more hindered trialkyl derivatives (equation 18). 

So the tertiary halide reacts by a different mechanism, which we call SnI- It s still a nucleophilic substitution reaction (hence the S and the N ) but this time it is a unimolecular reaction, hence the 1 . The rate-determining step during reaction is the slow unimolecular dissociation of the alkyl halide to form a bromide ion and a carbocation that is planar around the reacting carbon. 

To check this possibility we performed experiments with different concentrations of NaBr in the NaY zeolite. Table 2 presents the results. It can be seen that upon increasing the amount of NaBr impregnated on NaY, there is preference to formation of the cyclobutyl bromide over allylcarbinyl bromide, indicating that the relative position between the bromide ions and bicyclobutonium governs the product distribution. Hence, zeolites may act as solid solvent, favoring ionization of alkyl halides and nucleophilic substitution reactions. In contrast to liquid solvents, where solvation is mostly uniform, the zeolite surface seems to provide unsymmetrical solvation of the cations, leading to product distribution that is different from solution. 

The utilization of polar polymers and novel N-alkyl-4-(N, N -dialklamino)pyridinium sedts as stable phase transfer catalysts for nucleophilic aromatic substitution are reported. Polar polymers such as poly (ethylene glycol) or polyvinylpyrrolidone are thermally stable, but provide only slow rates. The dialkylaminopyridininium salts are very active catalysts, and are up to 100 times more stable than tetrabutylammonium bromide, allowing recovery and reuse of catalyst. The utilization of b is-dialkylaminopypridinium salts for phase-transfer catalyzed nucleophilic substitution by bisphenoxides leads to enhanced rates, and the requirement of less catalyst. Experimental details are provided. 

Kinetic experiments have been performed on a copper-catalyzed substitution reaction of an alkyl halide, and the reaction rate was found to be first order in the copper salt, the halide, and the Grignard reagent [121]. This was not the case for a silver-catalyzed substitution reaction with a primary bromide, in which the reaction was found to be zero order in Grignard reagents [122]. A radical mechanism might be operative in the case of the silver-catalyzed reaction, whereas a nucleophilic substitution mechanism is suggested in the copper-catalyzed reaction [122]. The same behavior was also observed in the stoichiometric conjugate addition (Sect. 10.2.1) [30]. 

As synthetic steps, the Michael additions of nitrogen nucleophiles were followed by nucleophilic substitutions of the chlorine atom with a primary amine and, finally, alkylations of the then secondary amino group with various alkyl bromides were performed just as previously developed for the chloro ester 1-Me in solution (see, e.g. Schemes 25,27,36 etc.). With differently substituted pyra-zoles as Michael addends, different primary amines and alkyl bromides, combinatorial libraries consisting of 8, 24 and 84 compounds were thus successfully prepared in ca. 60% yield and proved by the LC-MS technique to contain all the individual compounds in about equal amounts (Scheme 80) [127]. 

The prominent role of alkyl halides in formation of carbon-carbon bonds by nucleophilic substitution was evident in Chapter 1. The most common precursors for alkyl halides are the corresponding alcohols, and a variety of procedures have been developed for this transformation. The choice of an appropriate reagent is usually dictated by the sensitivity of the alcohol and any other functional groups present in the molecule. Unsubstituted primary alcohols can be converted to bromides with hot concentrated hydrobromic acid.4 Alkyl chlorides can be prepared by reaction of primary alcohols with hydrochloric acid-zinc chloride.5 These reactions proceed by an SN2 mechanism, and elimination and rearrangements are not a problem for primary alcohols. Reactions with tertiary alcohols proceed by an SN1 mechanism so these reactions are preparatively useful only when the carbocation intermediate is unlikely to give rise to rearranged product.6 Because of the harsh conditions, these procedures are only applicable to very acid-stable molecules. 

---