Diethyl phosphite is the organophosphorus compound with the formula (C2H5O)2P(O)H. It is a popular reagent for generating other organophosphorus compounds, exploiting the high reactivity of the P-H bond. Diethyl phosphite is a colorless liquid. The molecule is tetrahedral.
Diethyl phosphite is the organophosphorus compound with the formula (C2H5O)2P(O)H. It is a popular reagent for generating other organophosphorus compounds, exploiting the high reactivity of the P-H bond. Diethyl phosphite is a colorless liquid. The molecule is tetrahedral.
==Synthesis and properties== The compound was probably prepared in the 1850s by combining phosphorus trichloride and ethanol, but intentional preparations came later. It arises as follows: PCl3 + 3 C2H5OH → (C2H5O)2P(O)H + 2 HCl + C2H5Cl Under similar conditions but in the presence of base, triethyl phosphite results: PCl3 + 3 EtOH + 3 R3N → P(OEt)3 + 3 R3NH + 3 Cl−
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).