Rates and mechanisms of the thermal solvolytic decomposition of arenediazonium ions

Abstract

Arenediazonium tetrafluoroborates have been prepared and the kinetics of solvolysis have been investigated in water, trifluoroethanol, water–trifluoroethanol mixtures, hexafluoropropan-2-ol, trifluoroacetic acid, and ethanol by a UV method. A heterolytic mechanism involving short-lived aryl cations leads to products derived from nucleophilic capture of the aryl cations by solvent or a solute. Ionic solutes in aqueous trifluoroethanol and trifluoromethoxybenzene in trifluoroethanol have no kinetic effect and neither does replacement of the tetrafluoroborate counter-ion by chloride in trifluoroethanol. Rate constants for any one compound are not very solvent dependent, the reactions generally being characterised by high enthalpies of activation and appreciably positive entropies of activation. Compounds with 4-Cl, 4-F, 4-NO₂, and 4-MeO substituents proved too unreactive for kinetic studies, but for different reasons. In ethanol, a radical reaction with characteristically different activation parameters competes with the heterolytic path and leads to hydrodediazoniation (reduction) by hydrogen atom abstraction from the CH₂ group of ethanol.