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Olaide Asimolowo Adeyemi

Reaction between carboxylic acids and amines

Alex V.  Follow

You have a false dichotomy.

Diamines and diacids can form salts with doubly charged anions and cations. Sadly, simply searching SigmaAldrich’s catalogue for the phrase diammonium did not turn up any example; however, I assume this is because these salts are unlikely to be used and thus wouldn’t sell. Chemically, proton transfer is one of the fastest reactions possible and thus simply mixing a diacid and a diamine in a suitable solvent would result in the diammonium diate salt as it would for an ammonium monoate salt.

Amide bond formation is a different reaction that typically requires activation or harsher conditions (e.g. heating). It is a condensation that results in the release of water. All that is required is the presence of an amino group and a carboxylic acid. So aminoethane and ethanoic acid can be heated in solution to produce N-ethylacetamide.

The one difference between the mono and the di systems is that the mono system has no of polymerising or cyclising. So the amide bond will always consist of one acid fragment and one amine fragment while in the case of a diamine and a diacid polymerisation or cyclisation can occur.

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James Bell  Follow
activator such as DCC.More
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Geoff Morton-Haworth  Follow
So, does that mean that when you are forming polyamides, a salt if formed first and then you have to heat the mixture to drive off the water leading to polymerisation?More
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Graham Kaye-Eddie  Follow
So what is it exactly about the “harsher conditions” that make the amine act as a nucleophile and not a base?More
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Jack Brennen  Follow
@H.Linkhorn In introductory chemistry, you would probably use heat. The salt forms immediately at any temperature at which the suitable solution is liquid. For the condensation reaction to occur, the activation barrier must be overcome which is easily achieved by heating up. Another one is removal of water e.g. using molecular sieves. In preparative chemistry, you would usually not use the actual acid but an activating ester (e.g. phenyl thiocarboxylate) or More
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Ersel19  Follow
in situMore
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