Friedal Crafts Alkylation:
This reaction is developed by Charles
Friedel and James Crafts in
1877.
In Friedal crafts alkylation, a haloalkane reacts with benzene in
the presence of an aluminium halide catalyst, or any other lewis acid catalyst,
and produce an alkylbenzene and a hydrogen halide.
The reactivity and polarity of haloalkane increase as we move up
the periodic table. It means:
RF > RCl > RBr > RI
This means that the Lewis acid used as catalyst in Friedel Craft
alkylation reaction tend have similar halogen combination. BF3, SbCl5,
AlCl3 and AlBr3 are commonly used Lewis acid in the
reaction.
Mechanism of Friedel Crafts alkylation:
1) In this step, a carbocation is formed which act as a
electrophile in the reaction. This activates the haloalkane.
2) In step two, an electrophillic attacks on benzene which
results in multiple resonance forms. The halogen reacts with the intermediate
and picks up the hydrogen to eliminate the positive charge.
3) The last step shows end of the step two and give the final
product.
Limitations:
There are few limitations of Friedel Crafts alkylation.
·
The reaction works
only with benzene or ACTIVATED benzene derivatives. It will not occur if the
benzene ring is deactivated.
·
The reaction works
only with ALKYL halides (i.e. chlorides, bromides or iodides), but it does not
work with VINYL or ARYL halides.
·
Alkylation reactions
are prone to carbocation rearrangement.
·
Over alkylation can
be a problem since the product is more reactive than the starting material.
This can usually be controlled with an excess of the benzene.
·
The Lewis acid
catalyst AlCl3 often complexes to aryl amines making them very
unreactive.