Sulfite formation versus chlorination of benzyl alcohols with thionyl chloride

Recently, we have reported the photolytic decay of a library of para-substituted dibenzylic sulfites in a Srinivasan–Griffin–Rayonet photochemical reactor. In an attempt to synthesize the complete library for that study we discovered that bis(p-methoxybenzyl) sulfite and bis(p-phenoxybenzyl) sulfite could not be formed and only their corresponding benzyl chlorides were synthesized. Thus, sulfite formation versus chlorination of a range of para-substituted benzyl alcohols with thionyl chloride was investigated. Sulfite formation was observed to be parabolically related to Swain and Lupton’s Field F -values while chloride formation was found to be linearly related to Swain and Lupton’s Field R -values.