Why does the glassware have to be dry in a grignard reaction?
1 Answer
Jan 1, 2016
Because water is the natural enemy of the Grignard reagent.
Explanation:
Grignard reagents (and organometallic reagents in general) are usually formed with the strict exclusion of water. A Grignard reagent is strongly nucleophilic and will react with water rapidly and irreversibly:
Note that sometimes we can exploit this reactivity if we wanted to put a deuterium label (
This would be much cheaper than buying the labelled reagent from a commercial supplier.
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