Substituent effects on nucleophilic aromatic substitution

Electrophilic aromatic substitution of nitrobenzene occurs selectively at the meta position. 

Does a nitro group have the same directing effect on nucleophihc aromatic substitution  

Treatment of l,2-difluoro-3,5-dinitrobenzene with methoxide leads to a single isomer of fluorodinitroanisole. Obtain the energies of the possible Meisenheimer complexes and predict the structure of the product. Is this outcome consistent with the previously-established directing effect of the nitro group  

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It might be expected that the activating effect of p-NO2 on nucleophilic aromatic substitution would be related to the a value of the substituent. From various studies of nucleophilic aromatic substitution, Miller and Parker213 obtained a <7 value for /2-NO2 of 1.27, very close to the values based on the ionization of substituted phenols or anilinium ions (Section ELD). 

The preceding explanation would seem to explain most of the data in Table 8.21, but there is one apparent discrepancy. We might have expected the methoxy substituent to be electron-donating, but it gives the same product orientation as does trifluoromethyl. This intuitive expectation of the substituent effect of methoxy is based primarily on its influence on electrophilic aromatic substitution (SeAr) and on nucleophilic aromatic substitution (SwAr) reactions, both of which involve attachment of a species to an aromatic ring to form a cr complex. In contrast, the carbanionic intermediates presumed to be formed in the benzyne reaction have the nonbonded pair of electrons in... 

The majority of rate studies on nucleophilic aromatic substitutions involve either the reactions of a large number of substrates with a few nucleophiles or a selected number of substrates with a great variety of reagents. For example, the electronic effects of substituents meta or para to the site of substitution has received detailed, qua,nti-tative attention in at least a dozen publications ranging from an early study by Berliner and Monack (63) to a recent one by Greizer-stein et al. (64). The latter study, which lists the intervening refer-... 

Nucleophilic aromatic substitution has been the subject of frequent and extensive reviews1-10. The data on reaction rates, reaction products, substituent effects, salt effects, etc. are all readily available and need not be reassembled here. In spite of this abundance of both data and discussion, some questions of mechanism remain incompletely resolved. 

Similarly, those reactions that are strongly assisted by withdrawal of electrons from the reaction site, such as nucleophilic aromatic substitution, give a poor fit to a Hammett plot for the substituents that are capable of withdrawing electrons by delocalization (—N02, —N2 , —C=N, and so on). An example is Reaction 16 in Table 26-7. To correlate reactivity data with structures where strong resonance effects operate, different sets of substituent constants are required.1... 

The propensity for C-N vs. N-H activation correlates well with substituent Hammet parameters groups that increase the basicity of aniline increase the relative rate of N-H activation, suggesting that nucleophilic attack by the amine at an empty d /dy orbital of Ta(silox)3 preceeds oxidative addition. On the other hand, electron-withdrawing substituents decrease the rate of N-H activation and increase the rate of C-N activation, similarly to the effects observed on electrophilic aromatic substitution. Nucleophilic attack by the filled d a orbital of Ta(silox)3 is expected to occur at the arylamine ipso carbon preceding C-N oxidative addition. The carbon-heteroatom cleavages can be accomodated by mechanisms using both electrophilic and nucleophilic sites on the metal center. 

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