Kinetic Study of Disulfonimide Catalyzed Cyanosilylation of Aldehyde Using a Method of Progress Rates

Kinetic study of organic reactions, especially multistep catalytic reactions, is crucial to in-depth understanding of reaction mechanisms. Here we report our kinetic study of the chiral disulfonimide catalyzed cyanosilylation of aldehyde, which reveals that two molecules of TMSCN are involved in the rate-determining C-C bond forming step. In addition, the apparent activation energy, enthalpy of activation and entropy of activation were deduced through the study of temperature dependence of the reaction rates. More importantly, a novel and efficient method which makes use of the progress rates was developed to treat the kinetic data obtained from continuous monitoring of the reaction progress with in situ FT-IR.