Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Calculations of steric hindrance in ester hydrolysis based on estimation of van der Waals strain energies of alkanes. [Gas phase; 298/sup 0/K]

Journal Article · · J. Am. Chem. Soc.; (United States)
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/ja00431a039· OSTI ID:7267349
Steric hindrance is traditionally defined by the Taft E/sub s/ values, which are derived empirically from rates of acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of esters: E/sub s/ = --log (k/k/sub 0/), where k is the rate constant for any ester RCOOEt and k/sub 0/ is for ethyl acetate. In this paper, the utility of hydrocarbon models for calculating E/sub s/ for R alkyl and cycloalkyl is explored. The postulate is that E/sub s/ is proportional to ..delta delta..H = (..delta..H/sub f//sup 0/ (neoalkane) -- ..delta..H/sub f//sup 0/ (isoalkane)), where neoalkane is RC(CH/sub 3/)/sub 3/. The neoalkane is intended to reflect the degree of steric strain in the tetrahedral intermediate and the isoalkane that is in the ester. Empirical procedures for estimating ..delta..H/sub f//sup 0/ prove relatively useless for these calculations. However, ..delta..H/sub f//sup 0/ estimated from molecular mechanics does provide good values: for example, E/sub s/ = 4.419 + 0.552..delta delta..H has a standard deviation of 0.4 for a total range of 4, and the correlation coefficient is 0.95 for 24 esters.
Research Organization:
Florida State Univ., Tallahassee
OSTI ID:
7267349
Journal Information:
J. Am. Chem. Soc.; (United States), Journal Name: J. Am. Chem. Soc.; (United States) Vol. 98:15; ISSN JACSA
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English