| Abstract: | The unsubstituted and p-substituted benzoates 2b – 2e of 3-dimethylamino-2,2bis(p-nitrophenyl)-propanol ( 2a ) undergo quantitative fragmentation in 80% ethanol yielding 1,1-bis(p-nitrophenyl)-ethylene ( 5 ) besides formaldehyde and dimethylamine, the hydrolysis products of the imonium ion 3 . The corresponding alcohol 2a , however, yields 2,2-bis(p-nitrophenyl)-ethanol ( 9 ) in addition to fragmentation products. Conversely, no fragmentation is observed with the benzoates 6b – 6e of 3-dimethylamino-2,2-diphenylpropanol ( 6a ) which lack electronwithdrawing substituents in the β-phenyl groups. These results are in agreement with a two-step carbanion mechanism (Scheme 2) involving the ionization of the aminoalkohol 2a and its esters 2b – 2e to the imonium ion 3 and the carbanions 4a – 4e . The latter undergo competitive cleavage, recombination and protonation to 5 , 2 and 9 , respectively, depending on the nucleofugal activity of –X. These conclusions are supported by the first-order rate constants for the benzoates 2b – 2e which differ merely by a factor of three. Since the p-substituents in the benzoate groups have only a minor effect on the reaction rate the bonds to the nucleofugal groups are not appreciably broken in the rate determining step. |
