Why are Grignard reagents strong bases?
1 Answer
A Grignard reagent features a carbon that is more or less directly bound to a metal centre......
Explanation:
...and, therefore, the ipso carbon has strong carbanionic character. This makes it (i) a powerful nucleophile, and (ii) a powerful base.
Generally, Grignards reagents are deployed in aprotic media. Addition of water or alcohols usually quench the Grignard, i.e.
Sometimes this can be useful synthetically to introduce, say, a deuterium label,
This would be a much cheaper way of labelling the alkyl chain than buying pre-deuterated material from a supplier. As deuterated solvents go, heavy water is cheap.
