Subject relative reactivity

Mixed condensations of esters are subject to the same general restrictions as outlined for mixed aldol reactions (Section 2.1.2). One reactant must act preferentially as the acceptor and another as the nucleophile for good yields to be obtained. Combinations that work best involve one ester that cannot form an enolate but is relatively reactive as an electrophile. Esters of aromatic acids, formic acid, and oxalic acid are especially useful. Some examples of mixed ester condensations are shown in Section C of Scheme 2.14. Entries 9 and 10 show diethyl oxalate as the acceptor, and aromatic esters function as acceptors in Entries 11 and 12. 

The absolute rate constants for a variety of cyclizafions have been measured. In particular, the rates of decarbonylafion of a variety of alkoxycarbonyl radicals have been obtained by LFP studies on PTOC oxalates." From these data, rate constants for the reduction of alkoxycarbonyl radicals with BusSnH and their 5-exo cyclizafions were determined. Whereas cyclizations were slightly faster than the analogous alkyl radical 5-exo cyclizations, their reactions with BusSnH were 10 times slower, indicating that cyclization processes should be synthetically useful. The rate constants for the cyclization of a number of variously substituted a-amide radicals have been determined together with their relative reactivities towards reduction using BusSnH (Scheme 16). Cyclizations of secondary-based radicals were found to be similar to the corresponding alkyl-substituted radicals. In addition, the rate constants were subject to minor electronic... 

Reactivity ratios for all the combinations of butadiene, styrene, Tetralin, and cumene give consistent sets of reactivities for these hydrocarbons in the approximate ratios 30 14 5.5 1 at 50°C. These ratios are nearly independent of the alkyl-peroxy radical involved. Co-oxidations of Tetralin-Decalin mixtures show that steric effects can affect relative reactivities of hydrocarbons by a factor up to 2. Polar effects of similar magnitude may arise when hydrocarbons are cooxidized with other organic compounds. Many of the previously published reactivity ratios appear to be subject to considerable experimental errors. Large abnormalities in oxidation rates of hydrocarbon mixtures are expected with only a few hydrocarbons in which reaction is confined to tertiary carbon-hydrogen bonds. Several measures of relative reactivities of hydrocarbons in oxidations are compared. 

The subject of relative reactivities of hydroxyl groups in carbohydrates has been discussed previously in this Series.1,2 In these articles, emphasis was placed on the selective introduction of substituents into carbohydrates. A much less exploited approach for the preparation of partially substituted carbohydrates involves the selective removal of hydroxyl-protecting groups from carbohydrate derivatives. The purpose of the present article is to draw attention to this relatively neglected aspect of synthesis in the belief that the greater use of de-... 

Major variations in the reaction conditions are required to effect substitution within a reasonable time interval. Thus, the data for the highly deactivated aromatics are subject to the same limitations characterizing experimental assessment of the relative reactivity of the highly activated monosubstituted benzenes. 

By mentioning the thermodynamic a-effect in the last section, we have again strayed from the main concern of this book—chemical reactions—into an area beyond its scope, namely the static properties of a molecule. Nevertheless, it is a large and growing area of study, and since it is in fact closely related to the general subject of frontier orbital theory, further digression on the subject will not be inappropriate. The interactions of orbitals within a molecule account for many features of chemical structure, much as the interactions of frontier orbitals account for many features of chemical reactivity. Just as frontier orbital theory is especially successful when it is used to compare the relative reactivity of two closely related systems, so its application to structural problems is most successful when the energies of two closely related molecules are to be compared. Here are two examples. 

In a competitive hydrogenation of two substrates in a solvent-free system the relative reactivity is again given by Eq. (8). On the other hand, however, the properties of the bulk phase vary with each change in the substrate, and this change may of course variously affect the rate constants and the adsorption coefficients. Moreover, the rate constant of A cannot be directly measured in the presence of an unsaturated compound B. As a consequence, substitution of /cah and knu into Eq. (8) instead of and k, yields the values Ka/Kb subjected to the same inaccuracy. In this case, therefore, the re-... 

Some of the following work was performed with a view to synthesis of perfluoro—ethers and —polyethers, which is not the subject of this present discussion, but we were interested in the relative reactivities of various sites in ether systems. Hence the following results are revealing. 

The sequence of reactions nicely points out the relative reactivity of carbonyl groups at positions 3, 11 and 17. Reaction of the triketone 29-2 with a controlled amount of pyrrolidine leads to the formation of the enamine from the most reactive ketone, that at C3 (30-1) (Scheme 5.30). Treatment of this intermediate with methylmagnesium bromide leads to exclusive addition to C17. Although the ketone at Cn is virtually inert to addition reactions, it is subject to reduction. Reaction of 30-2 with lithium aluminum hydride thus leads to the corresponding j8-hydroxy derivative. The enamine is then removed by acid hydrolysis (30-4). Reaction of the newly formed alcohol with /i-toluenesulfonyl... 

We have considered so far free-radical polymerizations where only one monomer is used and the product is a homopdlymer. The same type of polymerization can also be carried out with a mixture of two or more monomers to produce a polymer product that contains two or more different mer units in the same polymer chain. The polymerization is then termed a copolymerization and the product is termed a copolymer. Monomers taking part in copolymerization are referred to as comonomers. The simultaneous polymerization of two monomers is known as binary copolymerization and that of three monomers as ternary copolymerization, and so on. The term multicomponent copolymerization embraces all such cases. The relative proportions of the different mer units in the copolymer chain depend on the relative concentrations of the comonomers in the feed mixture and on their relative reactivities. This will be the main subject of our discussion in this chapter. 

At this point we want to consider the relative reactivity of carboxylic acid derivatives and other carbonyl compounds in general terms. We return to the subject in more detail in Chapter 7. Let us first examine some of the salient structural features of the carbonyl compounds. The strong polarity of the C=0 bond is the origin of its reactivity toward nucleophiles. The bond dipole of the C-X bond would be expected increase carbonyl reactivity as the group X becomes more electronegative. There is another powerful effect exerted by the group X, which is resonance electron donation. 

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