Sodium thiophenoxide alkyl halides

The replacement of an a hydrogen of an alkyl halide by halogen decreases Sn2 reactivity. Chloroform, however, is about one thousandfold more reactive in basic hydrolysis than methylene chloride . Every bromine-containing halo-form studied (Table 7) is at least 600 times as reactive toward hydroxide ions in 66.7% aqueous dioxan as methylene bromide ". Toward weakly basic nucleophiles, such as thiophenoxide ion, the predicted reactivity order is obeyed haloforms have been found to be less reactive than the corresponding methylene halides . The reaction of haloforms with sodium thiophenoxide is strongly accelerated, however, by the presence of hydroxide ions - . These observations are quite unexplainable in terms of scheme (22). 

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