Room temperature solution studies of complexation between o-chloranil and a series of anilines by spectrophotometric method

Electron donor-acceptor (EDA) complex formation between o-chloranil and a series of anilines has been studied in CCl4 medium. In all the cases, EDA complexes are formed instantaneously on mixing the donor and acceptor solutions. N,N-dimethylaniline and NN-dimethyl-p-toluidine form stable EDA complexes with o-chloranil while the other complexes decay slowly into secondary products. The kinetics of all these reactions has been studied by UV-VIS absorption spectrophotometric method and the rate constants of the reactions and formation constants of the EDA complexes have been determined. The charge transfer (CT) transition energies of the complexes are found to change systematically with change in the number and position of the methyl groups in the donor molecules (methylanilines). From an analysis of this variation, the electron affinity of o-chloranil has been found to be 2.54 eV. A perturbational inductive effect Huckel parameter h(Me) has been found from this trend and the value obtained (-0.27) is very close to that (-0.3) obtained by Lepley (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 86 (1964) 2545) from a study of tetracyano ethylene (TCNE)-methylbenzene complexes. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.