Electrophilicity of quinones and its relationship with hydride affinity

In this Letter we show that the electrophilicity index assesses well the hydride affinity (HA) order of quinones established for a limited number of cases experimentally observed. Further comparisons with predicted HA values for a larger data base suggest that both the electrophilicity index and HA are tightly related quantities. Furthermore, electrophilic activation/deactivation patterns induced by electron-withdrawing and electron-donating groups may be consistently accounted for by the model. These results open the possibility of predicting HA for quinones not evaluated experimentally up to date.