Nucleophilic substitution reactions rate-determining step

The combination of addition and elimination reactions has the overall effect of substituting one nucleophile for another in this case, substituting an alcohol for water. The rate of these nucleophilic substitution reactions is determined by the ease with which the elimination step occurs. As a rule, the best leaving groups in nucleophilic substitutions reactions are weak bases. The most reactive of the carboxylic acid derivatives are the acyl chlorides because the leaving group is a chloride ion, which is a very weak base (ATb KT20). 

We recently studied if it is possible to device a selection strategy based on the relative stability of the intermediate of a reaction [24]. It is known that in the palladium-catalyzed allylic substitution, the rate-determining step is the attack of the nucleophile on the n-allyl-palladium species. The transition state of this step is believed to be late when carbon nucleophiles are used. In this scenario, an inverse correlation of the energy of the intermediate and the reaction rate is expected, as the transition state is more product-like (see Figure 4.10). Based on this hypothesis, the selection of catalyst among a dynamic mixture of palladium complexes was studied. 

The reaction occurs in two stages Only the first stage involves nucleophilic substitution It IS the rate determining step... 

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. 

This means that it is first order with respect to the haloalkane and zero order with respect to the hydroxide ions. This implies that the rate-determining step (the slow step) of the mechanism only involves the haloalkane. Hence S l means that the reaction involves Substitution by a Nucleophile and that it follows first-order kinetics, i.e. only one species is involved in the rate-determining step. 

A reaction described as Sn2, abbreviation for substitution, nucleophilic (bimolecular), is a one-step process, and no intermediate is formed. This reaction involves the so-called backside attack of a nucleophile Y on an electrophilic center RX, such that the reaction center the carbon or other atom attacked by the nucleophile) undergoes inversion of stereochemical configuration. In the transition-state nucleophile and exiphile (leaving group) reside at the reaction center. Aside from stereochemical issues, other evidence can be used to identify Sn2 reactions. First, because both nucleophile and substrate are involved in the rate-determining step, the reaction is second order overall rate = k[RX][Y]. Moreover, one can use kinetic isotope effects to distinguish SnI and Sn2 cases (See Kinetic Isotope Effects). 

The yield of the nucleophilic substitution product from the stepwise preassociation mechanism k[ = k. Scheme 2.4) is small, because of the low concentration of the preassociation complex (Xas 0.7 M for the reaction of X-2-Y). Formally, the stepwise preassociation reaction is kinetically bimolecular, because both the nucleophile and the substrate are present in the rate-determining step ( j). In fact, these reactions are borderline between S l and Sn2 because the kinetic order with respect to the nucleophile cannot be rigorously determined. A small rate increase may be due to either formation of nucleophile adduct by bimolecular nucleophilic substitution or a positive specific salt effect, whUe a formally bhnole-cular reaction may appear unimolecular due to an offsetting negative specific salt effect on the reaction rate. 

Quantitative studies of Michael-type additions in aqueous solutions are relatively scarce. Recently the rate-determining steps of the Michael reaction were investigated with substituted pyridines as nucleophiles (Heo and Bunting, 1992). The uncatalyzed Michael reaction proceeds nicely under neutral conditions when water is used as solvent, without any catalyst. 

---