Toward a Generalized Treatment of the Solvent Effect Based on Four Empirical Scales: Dipolarity (SdP, a New Scale), Polarizability (SP), Acidity (SA), and Basicity (SB) of the Medium

This paper reports a methodology for analyzing the solvent effect from empirical measurements of solvent acidity (SA), basicity (SB), dipolarity (SdP), and polarizability (SP). The proposed methodology departs from the traditional single-parameter procedures for estimating nonspecific solvent effects by splitting them into a polarizability term and a dipolarity term. In this work, we examined the SA, SB, SP, and SdP values for 160 solvents, the gas phase (the absence of solvent) being the origin of these scales. As shown in this paper, this information allows one not only to accurately describe the solvent effect experienced by any solute—whether polar or nonpolar and exhibiting some or no specific interaction…