Substitution, electrophilic alternant hydrocarbons

In alternant hydrocarbons (p. 55), the reactivity at a given position is similar for electrophilic, nucleophilic, and free-radical substitution, because the same kind of resonance can be shown in all three types of intermediate (cf. 20,22, and 23). Attack at the position that will best delocalize a positive charge will also best delocalize a negative charge or an unpaired electron. Most results are in accord with these predictions. For example, naphthalene is attacked primarily at the 1 position by NOj, NHJ, and Ph, and always more readily than benzene. 

The perturbational MO method of Longuet-Higgins (11) and Dewar (12), which was thoroughly reviewed by Dewar and Dougherty (6), has been the pencil-and-paper method of choice in numerous applications. More recently, a modified free-electron (MFE) MO approach (13-15) and a valence-bond structure-resonance theory (VBSRT) (7, 16, 17) have been applied to several PAH structure and reactivity problems. A new perturbational variant of the free-electron MO method (PMO F) has also been derived and reported (8, 18). Both PMO F and VBSRT qualify as simple pencil-and-paper procedures. When applied to a compilation of electrophilic substitution parameters (ct+) (19-23), the correlation coefficients of calculated reactivity indexes with cr+ for alternant hydrocarbons are 0.973 and 0.959, respectively (8). In this case, the performance of the PMO F method rivals that of the best available SCF calculations for systems of this size, and that of VBSRT is sufficient for most purposes. 

The ground state approach would clearly fail to account for the greater ease of substitution of naphthalene in the a position compared to the p position by electrophilic reagents. This is because naphthalene is an alternant hydrocarbon and is predicted to have equal charges at each ir-electron center. 

It is observed that many even alternant hydrocarbons tend to undergo nucleophilic substitution, electrophilic substitution, and radical addition at the same site(s). Rationalize this behavior in terms of the following indices (where appropriate) qr, HOMO, LUMO, L],... 

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