The Deplanation Of Phosphonium Alkene

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Wittig reactions allow the generation of an alkene from the reaction between an aldehyde/ketone and a ylide (derived from phosphonium salt).The mechanism for the synthesis of trans-9-(2-phenylethenyl) anthracene first requires the formation of the phosphonium salt by the addition of triphenylphosphine and alkyl halide. The phosphonium halide is produced through the nucleophilic substitution of 1° and 2° alkyl halides and triphenylphosphine (the nucleophile and weak base) 4 An example is benzyltriphenylphosphonium chloride which was used in this experiment. The second step in the formation of the of the Wittig reagent which is primarily called a ylide and derived from a phosphonium halide. In the formation of the ylide, the phosphonium ion in benzyltriphenylphosphonium chloride is deprotonated by the base, sodium hydroxide to produce the ylide as shown in equation 1. The positive charge on the phosphorus atom is a strong EWG (electron-withdrawing group), which will trigger the adjacent carbon as a weak acid 5 Very strong bases are required for deprotonation such as an alkyl lithium however in this experiment 50% sodium hydroxide was used as reiterated. Lastly, the reaction between ylide and aldehyde/ketone produces an alkene.3

(Eq. 1)

As shown in equation 2, the reaction between the phosphonium salt and the sodium hydroxide produces the ylide/carbanion that is stabilized due to the positive charge on phosphorus and the conjugation that occurs in the benzene ring as shown by the structure B in equation 2. The ylide produced also has a resonance form (B’). The resonance form is advantageous because it contains no formal charge and the double bond it contains results in the same position of the double bond in the final a...

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...e 3. Both letters A and B within the structure of trans-9-(2-phenylethenyl) anthracene, that make up the alkene, have a chemical shift between 5-6 ppm and both produce doublets because it has 1 adjacent hydrogen and according to the N + 1 rule that states the number of hydrogens in the adjacent carbon plus 1 provides the splitting pattern and the number of peaks in the split signal, which in this case is a doublet.1 Letters C and D that consist of the aromatic rings, both are multiplets, and have a chemical shift between 7-8 ppm. 1H NMR could be used to differentiate between cis and trans isomers of the product due to J-coupling. When this occurs, trans coupling will be between 11 and 19 Hz and cis coupling will be between 5 and 14 Hz, showing that cis has a slightly lowered coupling constant than trans, and therefore have their respective positions in a product. 2

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