Carbon Footprints: The Wittig Reaction

Abstract

Abstract As a molecular architect working on an atomic construction site you need to be able to build up the carbon skeleton of your project, not merely decorate it with foreign atoms. There are dozens of different ways of doing that, and in this and the next section I shall introduce you to just two of them to give you a taste of what is available. A secondary point is that throughout chemistry you will find reactions denoted by proper nouns, recognizing the chemists who have invented or developed them. One example is that of the ‘Wittig reaction’, which is named after the German chemist Georg Wittig (1897–1987; Nobel Prize 1979). The reaction is used to replace the oxygen atom of a CO group in a molecule by a carbon atom, so that what starts out as decoration becomes part of a growing network of carbon atoms. You need to know that phosphine, PH3, 1, the phosphorus cousin of ammonia, NH3, is a base (Reaction 2). When it accepts a proton it becomes the ion PH4+. The H atoms in that ion can be replaced with other groups of atoms. A replacement that will be of interest is when three of the H atoms have been replaced by benzene rings and the remaining H atom has been replaced by –CH3. The resulting ion is 2. In the presence of a base, such as the hydroxide ion, OH–, the –CH3 group can be induced to release one of its protons, so the positive ion becomes the neutral molecule, 3. Note that there is a partial positive charge on the P atom and a partial negative charge on the C atom of the CH2 group. The presence of that partial negative charge suggests that the species could act as a nucleophile (Reaction 15), a seeker out of positive charge, with the CH2 group the charge-seeking head of the missile. Let’s watch what happens when 3 attacks a molecule with a CO group, specifically 4: perhaps you want to sprout a carbon chain out from the ring and intend to begin by replacing the O atom with a C atom.