The basicity of p-substituted phenolates and the elimination-substitution ratio in p-nitrophenethyl bromide:: A HSAB theoretical study

The influence of basicity in a set of para-substituted phenolates on the elimination-substitution ratio obtained upon reaction with p-nitrophenethyl bromide has been studied. A correlation between experimental equilibrium data (pK(a)) and reactivity indices obtained from density functional theory (DFT) was looked for in order to show that the hard and soft acids and bases principle (HSAB) is well suited to describe the basicity properties of the para-substituted phenolates. When the basicity of para-substituted phenolates increases, their global hardness and their condensed softness at the oxygen atom increase; the negative net charge, condensed nucleophilic fukui function, and condensed nucleophilic softness of the oxygen atom increase. The proposal that the alkyl halide substrate possesses a hard beta-hydrogen atom and a soft alpha-carbon was studied for p-nitrophenethyl bromide; it turns out that the beta-hydrogen atom is soft, even softer than the carbon atom. The experimental results for the elimination-substitution ratio for p-nitrophenethyl bromide can be explained from a local-local HSAB viewpoint for the para-substituted phenolates and p-nitrophenethyl bromide and not from a global-local level viewpoint as suggested before. The results suggest that para-substituted phenolates with higher basicity (harder), less delocalized negative charge into the fragment R-C6H4, and a more polarizable oxygen atom (softer) do have a lower (relative) attraction toward an alkyl carbon atom (soft) than toward a hydrogen atom (softer) from p-nitrophenethyl bromide. The beta-hydrogen and alpha-carbon atoms can be considered to act as a Lewis acid toward the para-substituted phenolate nucleophile considered as a base.