Substitution, electrophilic arenium ions

Arenium ion (Section 12 2) The carbocation intermediate formed by attack of an electrophile on an aromatic substrate in electrophilic aromatic substitution See cyclohexadienyl cation... 

Isotope Effects. If the hydrogen ion departs before the arrival of the electrophile (SeI mechanism) or if the arrival and departure are simultaneous, there should be a substantial isotope effect (i.e., deuterated substrates should undergo substitution more slowly than nondeuterated compounds) because, in each case, the C—H bond is broken in the rate-determining step. However, in the arenium ion mechanism, the C—H bond is not broken in the rate-... 

In Chapter 3, it was mentioned that positive ions can form addition complexes with 7T systems. Since the initial step of electrophilic substitution involves attack by a positive ion on an aromatic ring, it has been suggested that such a complex, called a % complex (represented as 10), is formed first and then is converted to the arenium ion 11. Stable solutions of arenium ions or 7t complexes (e.g., with Br2, l2> picric... 

Mercuration of aromatic compounds can be accomplished with mercuric salts, most often Hg(OAc)2 ° to give ArHgOAc. This is ordinary electrophilic aromatic substitution and takes place by the arenium ion mechanism (p. 675). ° Aromatic compounds can also be converted to arylthallium bis(trifluoroacetates), ArTl(OOCCF3)2, by treatment with thallium(III) trifluoroacetate in trifluoroace-tic acid. ° These arylthallium compounds can be converted to phenols, aryl iodides or fluorides (12-28), aryl cyanides (12-31), aryl nitro compounds, or aryl esters (12-30). The mechanism of thallation appears to be complex, with electrophilic and electron-transfer mechanisms both taking place. 

The first step is usually, but not always, rate determining. It can be seen that this mechanism greatly resembles the tetrahedral mechanism discussed in Chapter 10 and, in another way, the arenium ion mechanism of electrophilic aromatic substitution. In all three cases, the attacking species forms a bond with the... 

Substituents already bonded to an aromatic ring influence both the rate of electrophilic substitution and the position of any further substitution. The effect of a particular substituent can be predicted by a consideration of the relative stability of the first-formed arenium cation, formation of which constitutes the rate-lintiting step. In general, substituents that are electron releasing activate the ring to further substitution - they help to stabilize the arenium ion. Substituents that are electron withdrawing destabilize the arenium ion, therefore, are deactivating and hinder further substitution. 

Substitution reactions allow the aromatic sextet of tt electrons to be regenerated after attack by the electrophile has occurred. Electrophiles attack the tt system of benzene to form a delocalized nonaromatic carboca-tion (arenium ion or ct complex). Some specific examples of electrophilic substitution reactions of benzene are summarized below (see Chapter 5). 

Mechanism. The electrophile takes two electrons of the six-electron n system to form a a bond to one of the carbon atoms of the benzene ring. The arenium ion loses a proton from the carbon atom that bears the electrophile to produce the substituted benzene. 

One interesting proposal86 is that the encounter pair is a radical pair N02 ArH formed by an electron transfer (SET), which would explain why the electrophile, once in the encounter complex, can acquire the selectivity that the free N02+ lacked (it is not proposed that a radical pair is present in all aromatic substitutions only in those that do not obey the selectivity relationship). The radical pair subsequently collapses to the arenium ion. There is evidence87 both for and against this proposal.88... 

Polycyclic aromatic compounds also undergo electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions. Because the aromatic resonance energy that is lost in forming the arenium ion is lower, these compounds tend to be more reactive than benzene. For example, the brotni-nation of naphthalene, like that of other reactive aromatic compounds, does not require a Lewis acid catalyst ... 

Note that both the bromination and the acylation of naphthalene result in the substitution of the electrophile at the 1 position. None of the isomeric product with the electrophile bonded to the 2 position is isolated in either case. The higher reactivity of the 1 position can be understood by examination of the resonance structures for the arenium ion. When the electrophile adds to the 1 position, the arenium ion has a total of seven resonance structures, whereas only six exist for the arenium ion resulting from addition of the electrophile to the 2 position. 

The simplest and most general mechanism for electrophilic aromatic substitution in solution is the so-called arenium ion mechanism, depicted in Scheme 2 [54,254]. 

As an example of a solvent-dependent electrophilic substitution reaction, the azo coupling (SsAr) reaction of 4-nitrobenzenediazonium tetrafluoroborate with N,N-dimethylaniline is given in Eq. (5-27) [504]. According to the two-step arenium ion mechanism, the activation process of the rate-limiting first step is connected with the dispersion of the positive charge. This should lead to a decrease in rate with increasing solvent polarity. 

Electrophihc aromatic substitutions are unhke nucleophilic substitutions in that the large majority proceed by just one mechanism with respect to the substrate. In this mechanism, which we call the arenium ion mechanism, the electrophile (which can be viewed as a Lewis acid) is attacked by the 71-electrons of the aromatic ring (behaving as a Lewis base in most cases) in the first step. This reaction leads to formation of a new C—X bond and a new sp carbon in a positively charged intermediate called an arenium ion, where X is the electrophile. The positively charged intermediate (the arenium ion) is resonance stabilized, but not aromatic. Loss of a proton from the sp carbon that is adjacent to the positive carbon in the arenium ion, in what is effectively an El process (see p. 1487), is driven by rearomatization of the ring from the arenium ion to give the aromatic substitution product. A proton... 

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