Abstract

The protonation of acetylene and ethylene (yielding the vinyl and ethyl cation, respectively) was investigated computationally by ab initio calculations [B3LYP/6–31G(d,p)], in the gas phase and in water, as modeled by the IPCM and SCIPCM continuum methods. The structures and NBO atomic charges were thus determined for the neutral bases and their protonated forms, while the comparison of gas-phase and aqueous basicities afforded the hydration energies of the protonated bases. It was found that the aqueous protonation of acetylene is more endothermic than that of ethylene by 5 kcal/mol, owing to the lower intrinsic basicity of the former (by 7.4 kcal/mol), which is only partly compensated for by the more exothermic hydration (by 3.8 kcal/mol) of the vinyl cation.

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