Ambident Reactivity of the Cyanate Anion

Ambident Nucleophilic Substitution: Understanding Non-HSAB Behavior through Activation Strain and Conceptual DFT Analyses

The ability to understand and predict ambident reactivity is key to the rational design of organic syntheses. An approach to understand trends in ambident reactivity is the hard and soft acids and bases (HSAB) principle. The recent controversy over the general validity of this principle prompted us to investigate the competing gas-phase SN 2 reaction channels of archetypal ambident nucleophiles CN- , OCN- , and SCN- with CH3 Cl (SN 2@C) and SiH3 Cl (SN 2@Si), using DFT calculations. Our combined analyses highlight the inability of the HSAB principle to correctly predict the reactivity trends of these simple, model reactions. Instead, we have successfully traced reactivity trends to the canonical orbital-interaction mechanism and the resulting nucleophile-substrate interaction energy. The HOMO-LUMO orbital interactions set the trend in both SN 2@C and SN 2@Si reactions. We provide simple rules for predicting the ambident reactivity of nucleophiles based on our Kohn-Sham molecular orbital analysis.

Assessing the effective factors affecting the conformational preferences and the early and late transition states of the unimolecular retro-ene decomposition reactions of ethyl cyanate, ethyl thiocyanate and ethyl selenocyanate

The variations of Δ[(HCGAE(X₃–C₄weakening) – HCGAE(X₃–C₄strengthening)] parameters correlate well with the variations of the retro-ene decomposition reactions barrier heights going from compound1to compound3.

Photogeneration and reactions of benzhydryl cations and radicals: A complex sequence of mechanisms from femtoseconds to microseconds

Benzhydryl radicals and cations are reactive intermediates central to the understanding of organic reactivity. They can be generated from benzhydryl halides by UV irradiation. We performed transient absorption (TA) measurements over the range from femtoseconds to microseconds to unravel the complete reaction scheme. The 290–720-nm probe range allows the unambiguous monitoring of all fragments. The appearance of the radical is delayed to the optical excitation, the onset of the cation signal is found even later. Ab initio calculations show that this non-rate behavior in the 100 fs range is due to wavepacket motion from the Franck–Condon region to two distinct conical intersections. The rise of the optical signal with a quasi-exponential time of 300 fs is assigned to the planarization and solvation of the photoproducts. The bond cleavage predominantly generates radical pairs. A subsequent electron transfer (ET) transforms radical pairs into ion pairs. Due to the broad interradical distance distribution and the distance dependence, the ET is strongly non-exponential. Part of the ion pairs recombine geminately. The ET and the recombination are terminated by the depletion of close pairs and diffusional separation. The remaining free radicals and cations undergo further reactions in the nanosecond to microsecond regime.

Farewell to the HSAB treatment of ambident reactivity

The concept of hard and soft acids and bases (HSAB) proved to be useful for rationalizing stability constants of metal complexes. Its application to organic reactions, particularly ambident reactivity, has led to exotic blossoms. By attempting to rationalize all the observed regioselectivities by favorable soft-soft and hard-hard as well as unfavorable hard-soft interactions, older treatments of ambident reactivity, which correctly differentiated between thermodynamic and kinetic control as well as between different coordination states of ionic substrates, have been replaced. By ignoring conflicting experimental results and even referring to untraceable experimental data, the HSAB treatment of ambident reactivity has gained undeserved popularity. In this Review we demonstrate that the HSAB as well as the related Klopman-Salem model do not even correctly predict the behavior of the prototypes of ambident nucleophiles and, therefore, are rather misleading instead of useful guides. An alternative treatment of ambident reactivity based on Marcus theory will be presented.

Nucleophilicity and nucleofugality of phenylsulfinate (PhSO(2)(-)): a key to understanding its ambident reactivity

Second-order rate constants for the reactions of the phenylsulfinate ion PhSO(2)(-) with benzhydrylium ions Ar(2)CH(+) have been determined in DMSO, acetonitrile, and aqueous acetonitrile solution using laser-flash and stopped-flow techniques. The rate constants follow the correlation equation log k (20 degrees C) = s(N + E), which allows the determination of the nucleophile-specific parameters N and s for PhSO(2)(-) in different solvents. With N = 19.60, PhSO(2)(-) is a slightly weaker nucleophile than malonate and azide ions in DMSO. While PhSO(2)(-) reacts with highly stabilized benzhydrylium ions to give benzhydryl phenyl sulfones exclusively, highly reactive benzhydrylium ions give mixtures of sulfones Ar(2)CH-SO(2)Ph and sulfinates Ar(2)CH-OS(O)Ph; the latter rearrange to the thermodynamically more stable sulfones through an ionization recombination sequence. Sulfones generated from PhSO(2)(-) and stabilized amino-substituted benzhydrylium ions undergo heterolysis in aqueous acetonitrile and the rate of formation of the colored benzhydrylium ions was followed spectrophotometrically by stopped-flow techniques. The ranking of the electrofugalities of the benzhydrylium ions (i.e., the relative ionization rates of Ar(2)CH-SO(2)Ph) was not the inverse of the ranking of their electrophilicities (i.e., the relative reactivities of Ar(2)CH(+) with nucleophiles), which was explained by differences in Marcus intrinsic barriers. While sulfones are thermodynamically more stable than the isomeric sulfinates, the intrinsic barriers for the attack of benzhydrylium ions at the oxygen of PhSO(2)(-) are significantly lower than the intrinsic barriers for S-attack, and the activation energies for the attack of carbocations at sulfur are only slightly smaller than those for attack at oxygen. Because reactions of PhSO(2)(-) with carbocations of an electrophilicity E > -2 (i.e., carbocations which are more reactive than Ph(3)C(+)) are diffusion-controlled, the regioselectivities of the reactions of PhSO(2)(-) with "ordinary" carbocations do not reflect relative activation energies.