Probing the Impact of Solvent on the Strength of Lewis Acids via Fluorescent Lewis Adducts

Various methods have been developed to measure the strength of a Lewis acid. A major challenge for these measurements lies in the complexity that arises from variable solvent interactions and perturbations of Lewis acids as their reaction environment changes. Herein, we investigate the impact of sol...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Amy E. Laturski, Joshua R. Gaffen, Paul Demay-Drouhard, Christopher B. Caputo, Thomas Baumgartner
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Chemical Society 2023-02-01
Series:Precision Chemistry
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1021/prechem.2c00009
Description
Summary:Various methods have been developed to measure the strength of a Lewis acid. A major challenge for these measurements lies in the complexity that arises from variable solvent interactions and perturbations of Lewis acids as their reaction environment changes. Herein, we investigate the impact of solvent effects on Lewis acids for the first time as measured by the fluorescent Lewis adduct (FLA) method. The binding of a Lewis acid in various solvents reveals a measurable dichotomy between both polarity and donor ability of the solvent. While not strictly separable, we observe that the influence of solvent polarity on Lewis acid unit (LAU) values is distinctly opposite to the influence of donor ability. This dichotomy was confirmed by titration data, illustrating that solvation effects can be appropriately and precisely gauged by the FLA method.
ISSN:2771-9316