Sodium borohydride is the tamer cousin of lithium aluminium hydride (LAH). It is used in aqueous solution to e.g. reduce aldehydes and ketones, but it leaves acids, amides and esters alone. Here I start an exploration of why it is such a different reducing agent.
Posts Tagged ‘immediate product’
Secrets of a university tutor. An exercise in mechanistic logic: first dénouement.
Sunday, October 28th, 2012The reaction described in the previous post (below) is an unusual example of nucleophilic attack at an sp2-carbon centre, reportedly resulting in inversion of configuration[cite]10.1021/ja00765a062[/cite]. One can break it down to a sequence of up to eight individual steps, which makes teaching it far easier. But how real is that sequence?
Transition state models for Baldwin dig(onal) ring closures.
Sunday, June 10th, 2012This is a continuation of the previous post exploring the transition state geometries of various types of ring closure as predicted by Baldwin’s rules. I had dealt with bond formation to a trigonal (sp2) carbon; now I add a digonal (sp) example (see an interesting literature variation).