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Why is acetone used in SN2 reactions?

Answer 1

Acetone used in #"S"_"N"2# reactions because it is a polar aprotic solvent.

#"S"_"N"2# reactions prefer polar aprotic solvents.

Although polar enough to dissolve both the substrate and the nucleophile, polar aprotic solvents do not form a hydrogen bond with the nucleophile.

The solvation shell of a polar aprotic solvent surrounding the nucleophile is relatively weak due to the absence of hydrogen bonding, which makes it easy for the nucleophile to attack the substrate.

In polar aprotic solvents, nucleophiles are more nucleophilic.

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Answer 2

Ryan Andrews

Acetone is used in SN2 reactions as a solvent because it is polar aprotic, meaning it dissolves reactants, minimizes ion pairing, and does not donate protons.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.