Rates of substitution

This is the most common and stable state of chromium in aqueous solution. The Cr ion, with 2d electrons, forms mainly octahedral complexes [CrX ], which are usually coloured, and are kweticallv inert, i.e. the rate of substitution of X by another hgand is very slow consequently a large number of such complexes have been isolated (see below, under chromium(III) chloride). 

TABLE 6.2 Stabilities of complexes of alkylbenzenes and rates of substitutions ... 

As we have seen the nucleophile attacks the substrate m the rate determining step of the Sn2 mechanism it therefore follows that the rate of substitution may vary from nucleophile to nucleophile Just as some alkyl halides are more reactive than others some nucleophiles are more reactive than others Nucleophilic strength or nucleophilicity, is a measure of how fast a Lewis base displaces a leaving group from a suitable substrate By measuring the rate at which various Lewis bases react with methyl iodide m methanol a list of then nucleophihcities relative to methanol as the standard nucleophile has been compiled It is presented m Table 8 4... 

Solvent Effects on the Rate of Substitution by the S l Mechanism Table 8 6 lists the relative rate of solvolysis of tert butyl chloride m several media m order of increasing dielectric constant (e) Dielectric constant is a measure of the ability of a material m this case the solvent to moderate the force of attraction between oppositely charged par tides compared with that of a standard The standard dielectric is a vacuum which is assigned a value e of exactly 1 The higher the dielectric constant e the better the medium is able to support separated positively and negatively charged species 8olvents... 

Solvent Effects on the Rate of Substitution by the S 2 Mechanism Polar solvents are required m typical bimolecular substitutions because ionic substances such as the sodium and potassium salts cited earlier m Table 8 1 are not sufficiently soluble m nonpolar solvents to give a high enough concentration of the nucleophile to allow the reaction to occur at a rapid rate Other than the requirement that the solvent be polar enough to dis solve ionic compounds however the effect of solvent polarity on the rate of 8 2 reactions IS small What is most important is whether or not the polar solvent is protic or aprotic Water (HOH) alcohols (ROH) and carboxylic acids (RCO2H) are classified as polar protic solvents they all have OH groups that allow them to form hydrogen bonds... 

Regardless of the alkyl halide raising the temperature increases both the rate of substitution and the rate of elimination The rate of elimination however usually increases faster than substitution so that at higher temperatures the proportion of ehm mation products increases at the expense of substitution products... 

Rate of substitution is independent of both concentration and nature of nucleophile Nucleophile does not participate until after rate determining step (Section 8 8) Rate depends on both nature of nucleophile and its concentration (Sections 8 3 and 8 7)... 

Rate increases with increasing po larity of solvent as measured by its dielectric constant e (Section 8 12) Polar aprotic solvents give fastest rates of substitution solvation of Nu IS minimal and nucleophilicity IS greatest (Section 8 12)... 

The reactivity of five-membered rings with one heteroatom to electrophilic reagents has been quantitatively compared in a variety of substitution reactions. Table 2 shows the rates of substitution compared to thiophene for formylation by phosgene and iV,AT-dimethylfor-mamide, acetylation by acetic anhydride and tin(IV) chloride, and trifluoroacetylation with trifluoroacetic anhydride (71AHC(13)235). 

The rates of substituted benzaldehydes are correlated by the Hammett equation with p = +3.76. 

It should be noted that not all electron-attracting groups enhance reactivity. The sulfonyl and trifluoro groups, which cannot participate in diis type of n conjugation, retard the rate of substitution at an adjacent caibon. ... 

Another interesting idea that can be drawn from Table 6 is with regard to the relative rate of substitution of the last reactive ring position in dimethylol derivatives. It is clear that there is no favorable change in the activation enthalpy... 

Other measures of nucleophilicity have been proposed. Brauman et al. studied Sn2 reactions in the gas phase and applied Marcus theory to obtain the intrinsic barriers of identity reactions. These quantities were interpreted as intrinsic nucleo-philicities. Streitwieser has shown that the reactivity of anionic nucleophiles toward methyl iodide in dimethylformamide (DMF) is correlated with the overall heat of reaction in the gas phase he concludes that bond strength and electron affinity are the important factors controlling nucleophilicity. The dominant role of the solvent in controlling nucleophilicity was shown by Parker, who found solvent effects on nucleophilic reactivity of many orders of magnitude. For example, most anions are more nucleophilic in DMF than in methanol by factors as large as 10, because they are less effectively shielded by solvation in the aprotic solvent. Liotta et al. have measured rates of substitution by anionic nucleophiles in acetonitrile solution containing a crown ether, which forms an inclusion complex with the cation (K ) of the nucleophile. These rates correlate with gas phase rates of the same nucleophiles, which, in this crown ether-acetonitrile system, are considered to be naked anions. The solvation of anionic nucleophiles is treated in Section 8.3. 

Partial rate factors are defined as rates of substitution at each position relative to benzene, on a per site basis, thus. 

Because their rates of substitution tue convenient for study, most work has been done with platinum complexes, and for lhe.se it is found that ligands can be airanged in a fairly consistent order indicating their relative abilities to labilize ligands irans to themselves ... 

Experiments have shown that sulfuric acid enhances the rate of substitution of alcohols sufficiently to make this a practical reaction, but substitution of amines is not practical under these conditions, and substitution rates for fluorides and chlorides are not significantly affected by H2SO4. Why ... 

The competitive method employed for determining relative rates of substitution in homolytic phenylation cannot be applied for methylation because of the high reactivity of the primary reaction products toward free methyl radicals. Szwarc and his co-workers, however, developed a technique for measuring the relative rates of addition of methyl radicals to aromatic and heteroaromatic systems. - In the decomposition of acetyl peroxide in isooctane the most important reaction is the formation of methane by the abstraction of hydrogen atoms from the solvent by methyl radicals. When an aromatic compound is added to this system it competes with the solvent for methyl radicals, Eqs, (28) and (29). Reaction (28) results in a decrease in the amount... 

In the literature discussing these results, the coincidence of the NN bond lengths in diazonium ions with that in dinitrogen seems always to be regarded with complete satisfaction. In the opinion of the present author this close coincidence is somewhat surprising, firstly because of the fact that in diazonium ions one of the nitrogen atoms is bonded to another atom in addition to the N(2) atom, and secondly because work on dual substituent parameter evaluations of dediazoniation rates of substituted benzenediazonium ions clearly demonstrates that the nx orbitals of the N(l) nitrogen atom overlap with the aromatic 7t-electron system (see Sec. 8.4). 

Fig. 12-1. Correlation between azo coupling rates of substituted benzenediazonium ions with the 2-naph-thoxide-3,6-disulfonate trianion and the chemical shifts of protons at the position of the diazonio group in NMR spectra of the corresponding monosubstituted benzene parent compounds (Diener and Zollinger, 1986).

One facet of kinetic studies which must be considered is the fact that the observed reaction rate coefficients in first- and higher-order reactions are assumed to be related to the electronic structure of the molecule. However, recent work has shown that this assumption can be highly misleading if, in fact, the observed reaction rate is close to the encounter rate, i.e. reaction occurs at almost every collision and is limited only by the speed with which the reacting entities can diffuse through the medium the reaction is then said to be subject to diffusion control (see Volume 2, Chapter 4). It is apparent that substituent effects derived from reaction rates measured under these conditions may or will be meaningless since the rate of substitution is already at or near the maximum possible. 

It was concluded that the variations in rate are due to variations in activation enthalpy rather than entropy, and since the rates of substitution rates at the para positions of toluene and /-butylbenzene varied by only 4 % for a change in reactivity of 6,430, it was concluded that the Baker-Nathan reactivity order does not arise from a solvent effect (c/. Table 57). 

Since the rate was independent of acidity even over the range where H0 and pH differ, and the concentration of free amine is inversely proportional to the acidity function it follows that the rate of substitution is proportional to h0. If the substitution rate was proportional to [H30+] then a decrease in rate by a factor of 17 should be observed on changing [H+] from 0.05 to 6.0. This was not observed and the discrepancy is not a salt effect since chloride ion had no effect. Thus the rate of proton transfer from the medium depends on the acidity function, yet the mechanism of the reaction (confirmed by the isotope effect studies) is A-SE2, so that again correlation of rate with acidity function is not a satisfactory criterion of the A-l mechanism. 

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