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Addition Reactions of Alkenes

  • Page ID
    877
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    The most common chemical transformation of a carbon-carbon double bond is the addition reaction. A large number of reagents, both inorganic and organic, have been found to add to this functional group, and in this section we shall review many of these reactions.

    • Addition of Lewis Acids (Electrophilic Reagents)
    • Addition of Strong Brønsted Acids
    • Rearrangement of Carbocations

    A large number of reagents, both inorganic and organic, have been found to add to this functional group, and in this section we shall review many of these reactions. A majority of these reactions are exothermic, due to the fact that the C-C pi-bond is relatively weak (ca. 63 kcal/mole) compared to the sigma-bonds formed with the atoms or groups of the reagent. Remember, the bond energies of a molecule are the energies required to break (homolytically) all the covalent bonds in the molecule. Consequently, if the bond energies of the product molecules are greater than the bond energies of the reactants, the reaction will be exothermic. The following calculations for the addition of H-Br are typical. Note that by convention exothermic reactions have a negative heat of reaction.

    rxheat1.gif

    Contributors

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    This page titled Addition Reactions of Alkenes is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by William Reusch.

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