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In general, in a group across the periodic table, the more basic the ion (the higher the pK a of the conjugate acid) the more reactive it is as a nucleophile. Within a series of nucleophiles with the same attacking element (e.g. oxygen), the order of nucleophilicity will follow basicity.
In 1962, Edwards and Pearson (the latter of HSAB theory) introduced the phrase alpha effect for this anomaly. He offered the suggestion that the effect was caused by a transition state (TS) stabilization effect: on entering the TS the free electron pair on the nucleophile moves away from the nucleus, causing a partial positive charge which can be stabilized by an adjacent lone pair as for ...
The two main mechanisms were the S N 1 reaction and the S N 2 reaction, where S stands for substitution, N stands for nucleophilic, and the number represents the kinetic order of the reaction. [ 4 ] In the S N 2 reaction, the addition of the nucleophile and the elimination of leaving group take place simultaneously (i.e. a concerted reaction ).
Negative numbers: Real numbers that are less than zero. Because zero itself has no sign, neither the positive numbers nor the negative numbers include zero. When zero is a possibility, the following terms are often used: Non-negative numbers: Real numbers that are greater than or equal to zero. Thus a non-negative number is either zero or positive.
An application of HSAB theory is the so-called Kornblum's rule (after Nathan Kornblum) which states that in reactions with ambident nucleophiles (nucleophiles that can attack from two or more places), the more electronegative atom reacts when the reaction mechanism is S N 1 and the less electronegative one in a S N 2 reaction.
In many nucleophilic reactions, addition to the carbonyl group is very important. In some cases, the C=O double bond is reduced to a C-O single bond when the nucleophile bonds with carbon. For example, in the cyanohydrin reaction a cyanide ion forms a C-C bond by breaking the carbonyl's double bond to form a cyanohydrin.
Nucleophile strength is also affected by charge and electronegativity: nucleophilicity increases with increasing negative charge and decreasing electronegativity. For example, OH − is a better nucleophile than water, and I − is a better nucleophile than Br − (in polar protic solvents).
Protic solvents react with strong nucleophiles with good basic character in an acid/base fashion, thus decreasing or removing the nucleophilic nature of the nucleophile. The following table shows the effect of solvent polarity on the relative reaction rates of the S N 2 reaction of 1-bromobutane with azide (N 3 – ).