Sciencemadness Discussion Board

obtaining a substituted benzylchloride

Cloner - 10-4-2006 at 04:44

I need to get a molecule which is basically a benzylchloride, only with R instead of H next to the chloride atom. Anyone have an idea how? Would grignard of bromobenzene and some aldehyde do the trick? I want the chlorine on a secondary carbon, not a tertiary...

flyingbanana - 10-4-2006 at 13:27

not exactly sure if this is what you want
but for a simple R you could do friedel crafts acylation of benzene, reduce carbonyl to alcohol and do chloride substitution there
for a more complex R, grignard with Br-R on benzaldehyde, then do chloride substitution on the resulting alcohol
SOCl2 would probably be good for the substitution

jack-sparrow - 13-4-2006 at 04:57

Cloner : You are right. Let's say you want to make 1-phenyl-1-chloropropane. You do the grignard of Bromobenzene and react with propionaldehyde. The resulting secondary alcool is treated with HCl to yield the corresponding chloride.