chemistry

perkyDani

what does a lone electron pair mean in cotext of nucleophiles/electrophiles?

Reply 1

Mehh

High density of negative charge? My guess is that its nucleophilic...

Reply 2

Asian cutie

i thought a electrophile should be able to accept a lone pair of electrons to form a new dative covalent bond.

Reply 3

StyleLover

A nucleophile is an atom or group of atoms which has an unshared pair (or lone pair) of electrons which it is able to donate to form a new chemical bond..
An electrophile is an atom or group of atoms that is able to accept a pair of electrons to form a new chemical bond..

Is tht what u were looking for?

Reply 4

oxymoron

perkyDani

what does a lone electron pair mean in cotext of nucleophiles/electrophiles?

A lone pair of electrons just means a pair of electrons that is not being used to make a bond.

Reply 5

finnstar

well, a lone pair of electrons on a nucleophile simply means it can form dative covalent bonds with other atoms.. eg..

NH3 is a nucleophile.. can form dative covalent (coordinate) bonds with Cu2+ ion to give the deep blue complex.

a nucleophile is an electron rich particle.
an electrophile is an electron deficient particle.

hope that helped..

Reply 6

wizz05

a nucleophile is a lone pair donor and an electrophile is a lone pair acceptor. e.g NH3 is a nucleophile as the nitrogen has a loan pair of electrons that are not part of the bond pairs.

Reply 7

perkyDani

yeah, thats what i thought a lone electron pair meant,
but surely, nearly all molecules have lone pair of electrons, even 0xygen, noble gases, so are they nucleophiles as well?

Reply 8

finnstar

noble gases are inert!!
water (h2o) is a lone pair because the oxygen atom has 2 lone pairs.
nitrogen atom in NH3 only has 1 lone pair.
oxygen atom in OH- has 2 lone pairs..

note all these lone pairs are available for bonding.. those in inert gases are not.

dont confuse yourself too much about this.. our a-level syllabuses are very narrow in this stuff..
im in UCLES (cambridge board) they can only ask us about NH3, H20 and OH- nucleophiles. (or at least its the trend ive observed)