Substitution, radical first order kinetics

Kinetic experiments have been performed on a copper-catalyzed substitution reaction of an alkyl halide, and the reaction rate was found to be first order in the copper salt, the halide, and the Grignard reagent [121]. This was not the case for a silver-catalyzed substitution reaction with a primary bromide, in which the reaction was found to be zero order in Grignard reagents [122]. A radical mechanism might be operative in the case of the silver-catalyzed reaction, whereas a nucleophilic substitution mechanism is suggested in the copper-catalyzed reaction [122]. The same behavior was also observed in the stoichiometric conjugate addition (Sect. 10.2.1) [30]. 

Radical decay kinetics have been shown to be 3/2 order, falling to first order, and also second order, falling with time deviations are apparently due to side reactions of 118. Radical half-lives are strongly influenced by the nature of the aryl substituents, being particularly short for ortho-substituted Ar because of inhibited delocalization. The corresponding compounds 39 have, accordingly, enhanced thermal stability, a factor useful in some commercial thermo- and photographic processes. 

Flowers et al. have dealt with the thermal gas-phase reactions of methyl-oxirane, other methyl-substituted oxiranes, and ethyloxirane. The kinetics of the processes have been compared. Pyrolysis of these compounds is a first-order, homogeneous, nonradical process the reaction rate is not affected by radical scavengers. A biradical mechanism holds. The thermochemical behavior of cyclopentene oxide and cyclohexene oxide is similar. The primary products are the corresponding carbonyl compounds and unsaturated alcohols. Two mechanistic possibilities have been discussed they are obtained from a common biradical intermediate or the alcohol is formed directly from the oxirane in a concerted manner. Thermolysis of spirooxiranes leads to ketone derivatives via biradicals with homolytic bond cleavage (Eqs. 376, 377). ... 

Nevertheless, several kinetic studies have shown that certain nucleophilic substitution reactions of aryl diazonium ions are first order and independent of the concentration of the nucleophilic species. Solvent effects, isotope effects, and substituent effects are also in agreement with a rate-determining unimolecular decomposition of the aryl diazonium ion. In other reactions, an adduct of the nucleophile and diazonium ion is a distinct intermediate. Substitution results when nitrogen is eliminated from the adduct. Finally, substitution can occur via radical... 

Quantitative investigations of the kinetics of these a-coupling steps suffered because rate constants were beyond the timescale of normal voltammetric experiments until ultramicroelectrodes and improved electrochemical equipment made possible a new transient method calledjhst scan voltammetry [27]. With this technique, cyclic voltammetric experiments up to scan rates of 1 MV s are possible, and species with lifetimes in the nanosecond scale can be observed. Using this technique, P. Hapiot et al. [28] were the first to obtain data on the lifetimes of the electrogenerated pyrrole radical cation and substituted derivatives. The resulting rate constants for the dimerization of such monomers lie in the order of 10 s . The same... 

Hence, the first clearcut evidence for the involvement of enol radical cations in ketone oxidation reactions was provided by Henry [109] and Littler [110,112]. From kinetic results and product studies it was concluded that in the oxidation of cyclohexanone using the outer-sphere one-electron oxidants, tris-substituted 2,2 -bipyridyl or 1,10-phenanthroline complexes of iron(III) and ruthenium(III) or sodium hexachloroiridate(IV) (IrCI), the cyclohexenol radical cation (65" ) is formed, which rapidly deprotonates to the a-carbonyl radical 66. An upper limit for the deuterium isotope effect in the oxidation step (k /kjy < 2) suggests that electron transfer from the enol to the metal complex occurs prior to the loss of the proton [109]. In the reaction with the ruthenium(III) salt, four main products were formed 2-hydroxycyclohexanone (67), cyclohexenone, cyclopen tanecarboxylic acid and 1,2-cyclohexanedione, whereas oxidation with IrCl afforded 2-chlorocyclohexanone in almost quantitative yield. Similarly, enol radical cations can be invoked in the oxidation reactions of aliphatic ketones with the substitution inert dodecatungstocobaltate(III), CoW,20 o complex [169]. Unfortunately, these results have never been linked to the general concept of inversion of stability order of enol/ketone systems (Sect. 2) and thus have never received wide attention. 

The mechanism for substitution of a nucleophile at a P-position of the ZnTPP macrocycle is a little different, since an EiCNmesoE2CNpCB process occurs in this case with two different successive nucleophilic attacks [110]. After electrogeneration of the porphyrin radical cation (ZnTPP step Ei), a first nucleophilic attack takes place at a wieso-position (step CNmeso)- This is kinetically more favorable because there is a larger charge density on the mesocarbons as compared to that on the P-carbons [123,124]. However, there is no proton that can be removed from the substituted me o-position after the second oxidation step (step E2) in this case, and a second nucleophilic attack takes place at the P-position (step Cnp) which simultaneously leads to the loss of the pyridinium attached to the /new-position. Then, the spare proton at the P-position can be removed in a last step in order to recover the aromaticity of the macrocycle (step Cb). As before, the global reaction can be written as shown in Eq. 2 ... 

---