Sunday, February 11, 2007

CHAPTER 16: AROMATIC COMPOUNDS

- Cyclic MO’s

o Besides the bottom and top MO, the MO’s come in degenerate pairs

o Instead of a node at each antibonding interaction you have pairs of antibonding interactions that lie along a nodal plane. As you increase the energy of a MO, you add a nodal plane, not one antibonding interaction (as before)

- The benzene MO

o All the electrons are very comfortable, because they are in low lying, bonding orbitals

- The cyclobutadiene MO

o The last two electrons have to get isolated into two nonbonding orbitals. It’s like having a diradical. If you thought plain old radicals were unstable, this is WORSE.

- What’s the official definition of aromatic

o It needs to be cyclic, with conjugation, no sp3 hybridization, a continuous ring of p orbitals (planar), and spreading the electrons around the ring must lower the energy

o Sometimes, spreading the electrons around raises the energy, as in cyclobutadiene. That’s called antiaromatic

o Sometimes, you have a ring that you might think is aromatic, but it doesn’t meet the criteria. That’s called nonaromatic.

- Huckel’s Rule

o If a ring has a continuous p system, you can use this rule

o 4N + 2 = aromatic

o 4N = antiaromatic

- Aromatic ions

o You can apply Huckel’s rule to ions, and those that are aromatic will be very stable and unreactive.

- Nitrogen

o Pyridine has a lone pair of electrons; the reactions that involve these electrons do not affect the stability of the ring and you don’t count those electrons for Huckel’s rule

o Pyrrole has a nitrogen with lone pairs that interact with the ring. That makes it a weaker base, because taking a proton in means disrupting the stable ring structure

o Pyrimidine has two basic nitrogens (6 membered ring)

o Imidazole has one basic, one non-basic nitrogen (5 membered ring)

o Purine is a fusion of pyrimidine and imidazole

- Furan and Thiophene

o Are basically the same as pyrrole, but with a lone pair instead of the H sticking out

- Bigger aromatic chains

o These can react similarly to normal alkenes

- UV specs of aromatics

o There is a characteristic benzenoid band around 254

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