The Measurement of Acid Strengths in Dimethylformamide

During the past ten or twelve years the technical literature has included a rapidly increasing number of reports involving acidbase reactions in nonaqueous solvents. This has been especially true in the analytical field. However, as J. S. Fritz (13) has pointed out, the majority of nonaqueous titrimetric methods (many of which are of considerable practical importance) are purely empirical developments, lacking an established theoretical basis. The work reported here is an attempt to measure the strength of several acids in dimethylformamide, thereby contributing to the meager but increasing data on the relative strength of acids and bases in nonaqueous solvents