Potassium Acetate (CH3COOK)

Technical Specifications

Product Description & Scientific Applications

Potassium Acetate (KOAc) is the potassium salt of acetic acid and one of the standard acetate bases in transition metal catalysis.

Miyaura borylation. Its role is specific: acetate displaces halide from the ArPd(II)X oxidative-addition complex to give an acetoxopalladium(II) species, and it is that complex which transmetalates with the diboron. Under biaryl phosphine ligands, computation puts a figure on the advantage — acetate binds κ² to palladium, making rotation of the metal centre away from the ligand's non-phosphine-bearing ring favourable by 0.6 kcal mol⁻¹, where the corresponding chloride complex disfavours it by 3.8. That rotation opens the coordination site bis(pinacolato)diboron must bind to, which is why acetate is used for borylating aryl chlorides.

Where it underperforms. In the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling of haloaryl MIDA boronic esters, potassium acetate gave 37% conversion against 51% for potassium carbonate and 92% for tripotassium phosphate. Relative base performance in transition-metal-catalysed reactions should not be generalised: it depends on the specific transformation and the reaction conditions.

Plasmid preparation by alkaline lysis. Neutralising the lysate causes covalently closed plasmid DNA to reanneal rapidly, while most chromosomal DNA and bacterial protein precipitates along with the detergent, which forms a potassium complex that centrifugation removes. Failure of that precipitation is probably down to improper pH of the acetate solution. Plasmids above 100 kb are selectively lost with the potassium salt — a real limit on the method — and replacing the usual detergent with N-lauryl sarcosine removes that loss.

Saturated-salt humidity standard. A saturated solution is used as a fixed-point humidity standard, holding the enclosed atmosphere near 23% relative humidity at room temperature.

Concentrated aqueous electrolytes. At 31 molal with 1 molal zinc acetate it gives an aqueous zinc-ion conductor with an electrochemical window of 3.4 V.

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