What functional group resembles a hydroxyl group?

1 Answer
Truong-Son N.
Jun 8, 2016

You may be asking about sulfhydryl groups (#-"SH"#), which resemble a hydroxyl group (#-"OH"#), so compounds that only contain #-"SH"# as a unique functional group are named based off of the original alcohol.

NOTE: Entire compounds are not functional groups; ethanol cannot be a functional group, because it is a complete, defined compound.

However, #-"OH"# is a molecular fragment and is called a functional group.

Normally alcohols have IUPAC names ending in "-ol", and have prefixes based off of the original alkane (e.g. #\mathbf("Ethan")"ol"#).

#"CH"_3"CH"_2"SH"#, or ethanethiol, is the sulfur analog of #"CH"_3"CH"_2"OH"# (ethanol). Ethanethiol is a thiol, while ethanol is a regular alcohol.

A simple way to name the sulfur analog of an alcohol, if the alcohol exists, is to simply add "thi" before "-ol" and utilize the entire name of the would-be alkane instead of omitting the vowel before the suffix.

#"Ethan"\mathbf("ol")# #-># #"Ethan"\mathbf("ethiol")#

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