Can you believe that marine organisms can produce haloarenes? Yes, it’s true. Marine organisms that can use chloride and bromide available in the ocean waters are capable of producing haloarenes. Haloarenes is present widely in nature and they have been known to exhibit several medicinal properties. Thus, various reactions of haloarenes occur artificially as well as in nature. Many other chlorinated and brominated aromatic compounds such as tryptophan, tyrosine and many other derivatives of pyrrole are also present in nature. Reactions of haloarenes or reactions of aryl halides can be primarily divided into three types: Nucleophilic Substitution Reactions Electrophilic Substitution Reactions Reaction with Metals The reaction of Haloarenes – Nucleophilic Substitution Reactions …show more content…
An electrophile means an electron seeking species. Haloarenes will undergo the usual benzene ring reactions such as nitration, halogenation, Friedel-Crafts reactions and sulphonation. Before discussing all the electrophilic reactions, we need to understand the nature of Reaction of Haloarenes with respect to the attack of an electrophile. We know that haloarenes are electron-rich compounds. Therefore, they can undergo electrophilic substitution reaction and the attacking species, in this case, will be an electrophile. The +M effect will result in the concentration of electron density at ortho −and para −positions. However, electrophilic substitution reactions with respect to the haloarene reactions are slow in comparison to benzene reactions. This is because the halogen group present in haloarenes are deactivating because of the –I effect. Hence, electrons are withdrawn from the benzene ring.