Tert-Butyl bromide stability

The assumption that tertiary alkyl cations are not stable in solvents other than super-acids is widespread and was apparently well founded on many experiments by different workers over many years [20, 24]. For this reason the stability of our polymerised solutions was astonishing and it seemed at first unlikely that the cation of the electrolyte could be a simple tertiary ion the tert-butyl cation in the experiment with tert-butyl bromide and the ions 2-4 in the polymerised solutions. This was because we did not know then that Cesca,... 

As a result of the inductive and hyperconjugative effects it is to be expected that tertiary carbonium ions will be more stable than secondary carbonium ions, which in turn will be more stable than primary ions. The stabilization of the corresponding transition states for ionization should be in the same order, since the transition state will somewhat resemble the ion. Thus the first order rate constant for the solvolysis of tert-buty bromide in alkaline 80% aqueous ethanol at 55° is about 4000 times that of isopropyl bromide, while for ethyl and methyl bromides the first order contribution to the hydrolysis rate is imperceptible against the contribution from the bimolecular hydrolysis.217 Formic acid is such a good ionizing solvent that even primary alkyl bromides hydrolyze at a rate nearly independent of water concentration. The relative rates at 100° are tertiary butyl, 108 isopropyl, 44.7 ethyl, 1.71 and methyl, 1.00.218>212 One a-phenyl substituent is about as effective in accelerating the ionization as two a-alkyl groups.212 Thus the reactions of benzyl compounds, like those of secondary alkyl compounds, are of borderline mechanism, while benzhydryl compounds react by the unimolecular ionization mechanism. 

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