Sulfones from aryl nitro compounds

Alkyl halides are often used as substrates instead of alcohols. In such cases the salt of the inorganic acid is usually used and the mechanism is nucleophilic substitution at the carbon atom. An important example is the treatment of alkyl halides with silver nitrate to form alkyl nitrates. This is used as a test for alkyl halides. In some cases there is competition from the central atom. Thus nitrite ion is an ambident nucleophile that can give nitrites or nitro compounds (see 0-60).731 Dialkyl or aryl alkyl ethers can be cleaved with anhydrous sulfonic acids.732... 

Sulfonic acids can also be obtained by the Strecker synthesis from sodium sulfite and aryl halides that contain reactive halogen. Thus o-formylbenzene-sulfonic acid is formed in very good yield when o-chlorobenzaldehyde is heated under pressure with sodium sulfite,354 2-formyl-4-nitrobenzenesulfonic acid is formed on merely boiling 2-chloro-5-nitrobenzaldehyde with alcoholic sodium sulfite solution.355 The nitro group of nitroaryl halides may also be reduced to an amino group (cf. page 626) using polyhalo compounds leads to poly sulfonic acids.356... 

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