Organic Compounds

Types of Organic Compounds

Organic compounds may be classified in a variety of ways. One major distinction is between natural and synthetic compounds. Organic compounds can also be classified or subdivided by the presence of heteroatoms, e.g., organometallic compounds, which feature bonds between carbon and a metal, and organophosphorus compounds, which feature bonds between carbon and a phosphorus. Another distinction, based on the size of organic compounds, distinguishes between small molecules and polymers.

Natural Compounds
Natural compounds refer to those that are produced by plants or animals. Many of these are still extracted from natural sources because they would be more expensive to produce artificially. Examples include most sugars, some alkaloids and terpenoids, certain nutrients such as vitamin B12, and, in general, those natural products with large or stereoisometrically complicated molecules present in reasonable concentrations in living organisms.
Further compounds of prime importance in biochemistry are antigens, carbohydrates, enzymes, hormones, lipids and fatty acids, neurotransmitters, nucleic acids, proteins, peptides and amino acids, lectins, vitamins, and fats and oils.

Synthetic Compounds
Compounds that are prepared by reaction of other compounds are known as "synthetic". They may be either compounds that are already found in plants/animals or those artificial compounds that do not occur naturally. Most polymers (a category that includes all plastics and rubbers) are organic synthetic or semi-synthetic compounds.

Biotechnology
Many organic compounds—two examples are ethanol and insulin—are manufactured industrially using organisms such as bacteria and yeast. Typically, the DNA of an organism is altered to express compounds not ordinarily produced by the organism. Many such biotechnology-engineered compounds did not previously exist in nature.

Key Factors that Influence Acidity of Organic Compounds

Charge
Removal of a proton, H+ , decreases the formal charge on an atom or molecule by one unit. This is, of course, easiest to do when an atom bears a charge of +1 in the first place, and becomes progressively more difficult as the overall charge becomes negative. The acidity trends reflect this:
Note that once a conjugate base (B-) is negative, a second deprotonation will make the dianion (B 2-). While far from impossible, forming the dianion can be difficult due to the buildup of negative charge and the corresponding electronic repulsions that result.

The Role of the Atom
This point causes a lot of confusion due to the presence of two seemingly conflicting trends. Here's the first point: acidity increases as we go across a row in the periodic table. This makes sense, right? It makes sense that HF is more electronegative than H2O, NH3, and CH4 due to the greater electronegativity of fluorine versus oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. A fluorine bearing a negative charge is a happy fluorine.
But here's the seemingly strange thing. HF itself is not a “strong” acid, at least not in the sense that it ionizes completely in water. HF is a weaker acid than HCl, HBr, and HI. What's going on here? You could make two arguments for why this is. The first reason has to do with the shorter (and stronger) H-F bond as compared to the larger hydrogen halides.
The second has to do with the stability of the conjugate base. The fluoride anion, F(–) is a tiny and vicious little beast, with the smallest ionic radius of any other ion bearing a single negative charge. Its charge is therefore spread over a smaller volume than those of the larger halides, which is energetically unfavorable: for one thing, F(–) begs for solvation, which will lead to a lower entropy term in the ΔG.

Resonance
A huge stabilizing factor for a conjugate base is if the negative charge can be delocalized through resonance. The classic examples are with phenol (C6H5OH) which is about a million times more acidic than water, and with acetic acid (pKa of ~4). Watch out though – it isn't enough for a π system to simply be adjacent to a proton – the electrons of the conjugate base have to be in an orbital which allows for effective overlap.

Inductive Effects
Electronegative atoms can draw negative charge toward themselves, which can lead to considerable stabilization of conjugate bases. Predictably, this effect is going to be related to two major factors: the electronegativity of the element (the more electronegative, the more acidic) and the distance between the electronegative element and the negative charge.

Orbitals
Again, the acidity relates nicely to the stability of the conjugate base. And the stability of the conjugate base depends on how well it can accomodate its newfound pair of electrons. In an effect akin to electronegativity, the more s character in the orbital, the closer the electrons will be to the nucleus, and the lower in energy (= stable! ) they will be. Look at the difference between the pKa of acetylene and alkanes – 25! That's 10 to the power of 25, as in, “100 times bigger than Avogadro's number”. Just to give you an idea of scale. That's the amazing thing about chemistry – the sheer range in the power of different phenomena is awe-inspiring.