SOME PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF THE PHOSPHORUS-NITROGEN BOND

Abstract

Abstract This lecture is dedicated to the memory of Dr Hafiz Boudjebel, who worked for two years in our laboratory and unfortunately died in a plane crash near Tangier in December 1973. We began working on organic compounds of phosphorus twenty years ago. We encountered many interesting problems, and, having to choose between them for this occasion, eventually decided to speak about the phosphorus-nitrogen bond and a few related questions. We could gather many experimental facts, which Hercule Poirot would describe as the pieces of a puzzle, and we are trying to arrange them according to a nice logical pattern. The pattern is by no means complete now, but some main lines begin to appear; both spectroscopic and chemical evidence give some hints concerning the respective electrophilicity and nucleophilicity of phosphorus and nitrogen, or, to put it another way, on the hybridization state of both atoms and on the order of the P[sbnd]N bond.