Question

What is a protic solvent?

Answer 1

1. The word ‘protic’ refers to a proton or a Hydrogen atom or ion. Thus, a protic solvent has a hydrogen atom present in it.
2. This hydrogen atom is such that it can be easily released to be available to solutes via hydrogen bonding.
3. Hence, the hydrogen atom should be bonded to an electronegative atom like Oxygen, Nitrogen, Fluorine, etc.
4. They are said to be acidic in nature and used mostly to dissolve salts in them.
5. These solvents are readily able to donate their proton to the solutes or favor reactions to proceed in the forward direction like in unimolecular nucleophilic substitution $\left({\mathrm{S}}_{\mathrm{N}}1\right)$ reaction.
6. The most commonly known protic solvent is water. Other examples are Ethanol, amines, $\mathrm{HF}$solution, etc.
7. These solvents are used in reductive electrochemistry as they release hydrogen gas on being reduced.