Liaison hydrogène des arylamines : compétition des sites π et N
An IR study, in the region of OH stretching, of a reference hydrogen-bond donor, 4-fluorophenol, hydrogen bonded to primary, secondary, and tertiary arylamines differently substituted on the ring and on the nitrogen, shows the formation of two kinds of 1:1 complexes in CCl4 solution: an OH···π and an OH···N hydrogen-bonded complex. The IR method gives only access to a global complexation constant Kt. A method is proposed for separating Kt into a Kπ component for hydrogen bonding to the π system and a KN component for hydrogen bonding to the nitrogen atom. This method is validated by comparing the estimated Kπ and KN values to theoretically calculated descriptors of basicity: the nitrogen lone pair orientation towards the aromatic ring, the molecular electrostatic potentials around the nitrogen and the π cloud, and the enthalpy of hydrogen bonding of hydrogen fluoride with the π system of selected arylamines. The main electronic and steric factors governing the competition between π and N sites are analysed. The strongest π and N bases among the arylamines are julolidine and Tröger's base, respectively. Triphenylamine and diphenylamine, which are nitrogen Brønsted bases, become π bases in hydrogen bonding. Moreover, there is no correlation between the pKHB and the pKBH+ scales of basicity of arylamines. The use of the pKBH+ scale is therefore not recommended in hydrogen-bonding studies.Key words: hydrogen bonding, arylamines, pKHB scale, competition of π and N hydrogen-bonded sites.