Chemguide: Support for CIE A level Chemistry

This statement is about the reactions of acyl chlorides with alcohols, phenols and primary amines. This will only be tested in the final exam of a two year course.

Before you go on, you should find and read the statement in your copy of the syllabus.

The reactions with alcohols and phenols

You will find this on the page about acyl chlorides and water, alcohols or phenol. You will already have read some of this for the reaction with water. Re-read the whole page, and make sure that you understand the similarity between all these reactions.

Notice that the syllabus talks about "phenols", not "phenol". It would be typical of CIE to ask you a question which involved a more complicated example such as the aspirin one at the bottom of the page. I am not suggesting that it is important for you to learn this example, but it is essential that you understand it.

You don't need the detailed mechanisms for these reactions, but you do need to know that they are examples of attack by nucleophiles. Read the beginning of the page what is nucleophilic addition / elimination?.

You need to go down as far as (and including) the section on "Why are acyl chlorides attacked by nucleophiles?". Expect CIE to use the term "nucleophilic substitution" for these reactions. Ignore the rest of the page.

The reactions with primary amines

You probably won't have met primary amines yet in any detail. Their chemistry is covered in section 10.7.

It doesn't make sense to learn about these reactions without first learning about the reaction between an acyl chloride and ammonia, even though it isn't specifically mentioned by the syllabus.

These reactions are described on the page about the reaction of acyl chlorides with ammonia or primary amines.

Don't try to short-cut this. Make sure that you understand the simple case with ammonia before you go on to the more complicated-looking reactions with primary amines. You will need to know about both types of primary amine - where the amino group is attached to either an alkyl group or a benzene ring.

This is getting to be a fairly complicated bit of chemistry - take your time over it.

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