Determining Michael Acceptor Reactivity from Kinetic, Mechanistic, and Computational Analysis for the Base-catalyzed Thiol-Michael Reaction.

A combined experimental and computational study of the reactivities of seven commonly used Michael acceptors paired with two thiols within the framework of photobase-catalyzed thiol-Michael reactions is reported. The rate coefficients of the propagation (k), reverse propagation (k), chain-transfer (k), and overall reaction (k) were experimentally determined and compared with the well-accepted electrophilicity parameters of Mayr and Parr, and DFT-calculated energetics. Both Mayr's and Parr's electrophilicity parameters predict the reactivities of these structurally varying vinyl functional groups well, covering a range of overall reaction rate coefficients from 0.