Organic Reaction Mechanisms

Reaction Mechanisms in Organic Synthesis Postgraduate Chemistry Series

Reasoning and Representation: the Sketching of Organic Chemical Reaction Mechanisms

For nearly a century organic chemists have developed a method of sketching chemical reaction mechanisms in order to reason-out the structural transformations that convert one set of molecules into another. Known informally as pushing electrons (or curly arrows), it is a form of chemical illustration in which a sequence of structures is drawn to represent the movement of electrons and nuclei fro...

Organic Synthesis: Aldol Condensation Reaction

In an "aldol addition" reaction an enol or enolate of an aldehyde or ketone reacts with a second aldehyde or ketone forming a new carbon-carbon bond which makes the aldol reaction an important reaction for organic synthesis. Originally, the aldol reaction used ethanal (see below) and therefore the product contained both an aldehyde and an alcohol functional group; thus it became known as the al...

Linear Reaction Mechanisms

All topologically distinct linear mechanisms (Le., mechanisms containing one reaction intermediate on both the left-hand and right-hand sides) of chemical reactions involving up to 16 elementary steps, up to 12 intermediates, and up to 6 reaction routes were computer enumerated and generated. The methodology previously developed for classifying, coding, and analyzing the complexity of such mech...

Organic Synthesis: Aldol Condensation Reaction

In an "aldol addition" reaction an enol or enolate of an aldehyde or ketone reacts with a second aldehyde or ketone forming a new carbon-carbon bond. This makes the aldol reaction an important reaction for organic synthesis. Originally, the aldol reaction used ethanal (see below) and therefore the product contained both an aldehyde and an alcohol functional group; thus it became known as the al...