Sulfur compounds, electronic structure

Nitric oxide is the simplest thermally stable odd-electron molecule known and, accordingly, its electronic structure and reaction chemistry have been very extensively studied. The compound is an intermediate in the production of nitric acid and is prepared industrially by the catalytic oxidation of ammonia (p. 466). On the laboratory scale it can be synthesized from aqueous solution by the mild reduction of acidified nitrites with iodide or ferrocyanide or by the disproportionation of nitrous acid in the presence of dilute sulfuric acid ... 

A comprehensive and critical compilation has been published relatively recently on gas-phase molecular geometries of sulfur compounds including sulfoxides and sulfones5. This book covers the literature up to about 1980 and contains virtually all structures determined experimentally, up to that date, either by electron diffraction or microwave spectroscopy. Here we shall highlight only some of the most important observations from that source5 and shall discuss recent results in more detail. 

I. Hargittai, The Structure of Volatile Sulfur Compounds, Reidel Publ., Dordrecht, 1985 (structures determined by electron diffraction and microwave spectroscopy). 

To summarize in contrast to the observed nucleophilic attack of strongly basic nucleophiles on the sulfonyl and sulfoxy sulfur of the three-membered ring sulfones and sulfoxides, the acyclic sulfone and sulfoxide groups are attacked by nucleophiles only with difficulty Although the precise reason for this difference is as yet not clear, it is most probably associated with the geometry, electronic structure, bonding and strain energy of the cyclic compounds. 

Tetracoordinate sulfur compounds containing a lone pair of electrons at sulfur possess a more or less distorted trigonal-bipyramidal structure, in common with the vast majority of other pentacoordinated molecules of the main group elements (189,191,199). A common name, sulfurane, is generally accepted for this type of compound. In principle, sulfuranes are chiral. However, both the number of optically active isomers and their optical stability depend on the nature of substituents bonded to the central sulfur atom, the apicophilicity of the substituents, and the energy required for permutational isomerization processes. In this context it is interesting to note that acyclic sulfuranes with four different ligands should exist in 20 isomeric forms. 

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