Triarylmethyl halides

In addition to Gomberg s original method using the reaction of the triarylmethyl halide with copper, zinc, or silver amalgam in an inert solvent, a number of other methods have been used. Table II shows some of them. Some of the methods amount to oxidation of a... 

Gomberg reaction org chem The production of free radicals by reaction of metals with triarylmethyl halides. gom.berk re,ak-sh3n ... 

Accordingly, we might expect triphenylmethyl (or trityl) halides, (C6H5)3C—X, to be even more reactive. In fact, the C-X bonds of such compounds are extremely labile. In liquid sulfur dioxide, triarylmethyl halides ionize reversibly, although the equilibria are complicated by ion-pair association ... 

This type of map can be used to discuss the different types of nucleophilic displacement reaction. Using the simplified version shown in Fig. 2 we have already seen that SN1 reactions, for instance the solvolysis of triarylmethyl halides, go through the separated ions in the top right-hand corner (Swain et al., 1953 Ritchie, 1971). At the opposite extreme, nucleophilic substitution at centres where the number of ligands can be increased may proceed over the bottom left-hand corner of the diagram. Examples are acyl transfer reactions and substitution at tetrahedral phosphorus centres (Alder et al., 1971) as well as substitution at square planar transition metal compounds (Wilkins, 1974). The nucleophilic reactions studied by Ritchie (1976), for which the rate... 

Gomberg free radical reaction. Formation of free radicals by abstraction of the halogen from triarylmethyl halides with metals. 

The relative ease with which triarylmethyl halides enter into the Michaelis-Arbuzov reaction is also suggestive of an SNl mechanism, although a homolytic process has been proposed (22). 

Although it might be expected that reactions which employed triarylmethyl halides would occur very readily, such reactions are rendered potentially more complex by the known nature of the halides and their propensity for involvement in free radical reactions. Whereas normal alkylation proceeds between sodium diethyl phosphite and diphenyl-methyl halides, success, or otherwise, in the use of the triphenylmethyl halides depends to some extent on the individual halide and on the metal in the phosphite salt. Thus, in an early study (in 1939), Arbuzov found that in reactions between silver dialkyl phosphites and triphenylmethyl bromide, dialkyl triphenylmethylphosphonates were indeed formed, but the use of the corresponding alkyl chloride provided the phosphite triester instead (metal dialkyl phosphites possess ambident anions ). A later study confirmed the behaviour of the silver salts towards the chloride, but also showed that, whereas dialkyl phophites with primary alkyl groups yielded phosphonic diesters (as had already been found), those with secondary alkyl groups afforded phosphite triesters moreover, the presence and nature of aromatic substituents were also able to control the course of the reaction. Reactions which involve triarylmethyl halides and sodium dialkyl phosphites may well be of a free radical nature since repeated studies have demonstrated the forma-... 

The same thing happens when alkyl halides are treated with silver in the presence of oxygen.41 The reaction with silver in the absence of oxygen is of course one of the methods used to prepare the stable triarylmethyl free radicals. 

Most carbocations are too reactive to be directly observable in ordinary solvents, and until relatively recently evidence has been obtained indirectly, primarily through the study of reaction kinetics and trapping processes, experiments discussed in Sections 5.1, 5.2, and 5.4. Nevertheless, a few types of compounds have long been known to produce observable concentrations of positive ions relatively easily. The triarylmethyl derivatives were the first of this type to be investigated the halides ionize readily in non-nucleophilic solvents such as sulfur dioxide,70 and the alcohols yield solutions of the ions in concentrated sulfuric acid. Early observations by the freezing-point depression technique (see Section 3.2, p. 130) established that each mole of triphenyl carbinol yields 4 moles of ions in sulfuric acid, the reaction presumably being by way of Equation 5.14.71 Results in methane-sulfonic acid are similar.72... 

Syntheses of alkyl phenyl ethers, C,H, OR, are carried out by refluxing aqueous or alcoholic solutions of alkali phenolates with alkyl halides the yields vary with the nature of the alkyl halides (40-80%). The reactive halogen in benzyl halides is easily replaced by an alkoxyl group (95%). ° The choice of a solvent is sometimes important. Thus, in the preparation of the alkyl ethers of o- and p-hydroxybiphenyl from a mixttire of the phenol, alkyl halide, and powdered potassium hydroxide, high yields are obtained using acetone as a solvent, whereas, with alcohol as solvent, only small yields are obtained. Triarylmethyl chlorides react with alcohols directly (97%). ... 

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