Kinetic Studies of Carbocation-Carbanion Combinations: Key to a General Concept of Polar Organic Reactivity

Abstract

A nucleophilicity scale has been developed that covers 30 orders of magnitude from simple arenes to stabilized carbanions (see picture). Amazingly, the addition of an electrophilicity parameter E and a nucleophilicity parameter N is sufficient to predict semiquantitatively the rates of a large variety of organic reactions.