Hydrogen bonding lowers intrinsic nucleophilicity of solvated nucleophiles

The relationship between nucleophilicity and the structure/environment of the nucleophile is of fundamental importance in organic chemistry. In this work, we have measured nucleophilicities of a series of substituted alkoxides in the gas phase. The functional group substitutions affect the nucleophiles through ion-dipole, ion-induced dipole interactions and through hydrogen bonding whenever structurally possible. This set of alkoxides serves as an ideal model system for studying nucleophiles under microsolvation settings. Marcus theory was applied to analyze the results. Using Marcus theory, we separate nucleophilicity into two independent components, an intrinsic nucleophilicity and a thermodynamic driving force determined solely by the overall reaction exothermicity. It is found that the apparent nucleophilicities of the substituted alkoxides are always much lower than those of the unsubstituted ones. However, ion-dipole, ion-induced dipole interactions, by themselves, do not significantly affect the intrinsic nucleophilicity; the decrease in the apparent nucleophilicity results from a weaker thermodynamic driving force. On the other hand, hydrogen bonding not only stabilizes the nucleophile but also increases the intrinsic barrier height by 3 to approximately 4 kcal mol (-1). In this regard, the hydrogen bond is not acting as a perturbation in the sense of an external dipole but more directly affects the electronic structure and reactivity of the nucleophilic alkoxide. This finding offers a deeper insight into the solvation effect on nucleophilicity, such as the remarkably lower reactivities in nucleophilic substitution reactions in protic solvents than in aprotic solvents.