Posts Tagged ‘Nucleophile’

σ or π nucleophilic reactivity of imines? A mechanistic twist emerges.

Wednesday, September 28th, 2016

The story so far. Imines react with a peracid to form either a nitrone (σ-nucleophile) or an oxaziridine (π-nucleophile).[1] The balance between the two is on an experimental knife-edge, being strongly influenced by substituents on the imine. Modelling these reactions using the “normal” mechanism for peracid oxidation did not reproduce this knife-edge, with ΔΔG (π-σ) 16.2 kcal/mol being rather too far from a fine balance.

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References

  1. D.R. Boyd, P.B. Coulter, N.D. Sharma, W. Jennings, and V.E. Wilson, "Normal, abnormal and pseudo-abnormal reaction pathways for the imine-peroxyacid reaction", Tetrahedron Letters, vol. 26, pp. 1673-1676, 1985. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0040-4039(00)98582-4

What is the approach trajectory of enhanced (super?) nucleophiles towards a carbonyl group?

Wednesday, May 11th, 2016

I have previously commented on the Bürgi–Dunitz angle, this being the preferred approach trajectory of a nucleophile towards the electrophilic carbon of a carbonyl group. Some special types of nucleophile such as hydrazines (R2N-NR2) are supposed to have enhanced reactivity[1] due to what might be described as buttressing of adjacent lone pairs. Here I focus in on how this might manifest by performing searches of the Cambridge structural database for intermolecular (non-bonded) interactions between X-Y nucleophiles (X,Y= N,O,S) and carbonyl compounds OC(NM)2.

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References

  1. G. Klopman, K. Tsuda, J. Louis, and R. Davis, "Supernucleophiles—I", Tetrahedron, vol. 26, pp. 4549-4554, 1970. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0040-4020(01)93101-1