Oxygen atom, electron affinity

Hydrogen bonds are formed to some extent by oxygen ((H20)x, ice, etc.) and perhaps also in some cases by nitrogen. The electrostatic structure for the hydrogen bond explains the observation that only these atoms of high electron affinity form such bonds, a fact for which no explanation was given by the older conception. It is of interest that there is considerable... 

By introducing reasonable values (about 2 for nitrogen, 4 for oxygen) for the electron affinity parameter relative to carbon, 8, and for the induced electron affinity for adjacent atoms (32/8i = Vio), we have shown that the calculated permanent charge distributions for pyridine, toluene, phenyltrimethylammonium ion, nitrobenzene, benzoic acid, benzaldehyde, acetophenone, benzo-nitrile, furan, thiophene, pyrrole, aniline, and phenol can be satisfactorily correlated qualitatively with the observed positions and rates of substitution. For naphthalene and the halogen benzenes this calculation does not lead to results... 

Amines possess a pair of p-electrons on the nitrogen atom. The nitrogen atom has a low electron affinity in comparison with oxygen. Therefore, amine can be the electron donor reactant in a charge-transfer complex (CTC) in association with oxygen-containing molecules and radicals. It will be shown that the formation of CTC complexes of amines with peroxyl radicals is important in the low-temperature oxidation of amines. 

Concerning the general reaction Scheme 1, attention is restricted to two special areas A), cases where X is a carbon-centered radical and Y is an oxygen atom joined by a double bond to some center Z (Eq. 4), and B), cases where X is a hetero atom, in most cases oxygen centered radical and Y is a carbon (Eq. 5) [11]. One is then dealing with formation and heterolysis of a bond between a carbon- and a hetero-atom. Of the two, the hetero-atom is of course always more electron-affinic and therefore in the heterolysis the electron pair joining the two will go to the hetero-atom. 

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