Revised mechanism for the hydrolysis of ethers in aqueous acid

Abstract

It has been shown recently that many supposed reaction intermediates in aqueous media do not have lifetimes long enough for them to serve this purpose. Among these are oxygen-protonated species where the positive charge is not delocalized, primary and secondary carbocations, and the commonly written species H3O+ and HO–. This means that the mechanisms for many of the organic reactions that take place in aqueous media are in need of revision. This paper concerns the acid hydrolysis of simple ethers, many of which cannot form carbocations stable enough to exist in water. Rather than an A1 process in which an oxygen-protonated species dissociates into an alcohol and a carbocation, which is then quenched by water, or an A2 process in which a water molecule or another nucleophilic species assists in this, the mechanism for most ethers is a general-acid-catalyzed process in which proton transfer to oxygen is concerted with C–O bond cleavage in cases where a stable carbocation can exist, or additionally concerted with nucleophilic attack for those cases in which stable carbocation formation is not possible. All of the cases for which rate constant data could be found in the literature are analyzed and discussed in this paper, with the exception of the hydrolyses of several azoethers, where additional hydrolysis mechanisms are possible. These will be discussed in a subsequent paper.