Answer to Question #86614 in Organic Chemistry for DEV Shukla

Question #86614

Explain the following:
i) NO2 is a better electrophile as compared to NH4.

Expert's answer

"Electrophiles are positively charged or neutral species having vacant orbitals that are attracted to an electron rich centre. It participates in a chemical reaction by accepting an electron pair in order to bond to a nucleophile"

In ammonium ion, nitrogen is bonded to four hydrogen atoms and shares electrons with them. Nitrogen atom has full octet. All the orbitals are fully filled. Hence, nitrogen does not have space for any additional electrons.

In nitronium ion nitrogen atom does not have full octet around it (one double bond with oxygen and one co-ordinate bond with the other atom of oxygen), hence it always seeks for an electron to join.

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Assignment Expert

19.04.19, 08:16

Dear Abhinil Ghosal, Questions in this section are answered for free. We can't fulfill them all and there is no guarantee of answering certain question but we are doing our best. And if answer is published it means it was attentively checked by experts. You can try it yourself by publishing your question. Although if you have serious assignment that requires large amount of work and hence cannot be done for free you can submit it as assignment and our experts will surely assist you.

Abhinil Ghosal

19.03.19, 09:50

Atfirst I want to say the question is not correct as NH4 doesn't exist . NH4+ exists . Now what is electrophile ? electrophile is the molecule which can accept electron density . See in NH4(+) , here N is hypervalent that means it has not any orbital ( d orbital ) to accept electron density but NO2+ has enough orbital to accept because it is hypovalent .

Answer to Question #86614 in Organic Chemistry for DEV Shukla

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