Many alkoxides are prepared from sodium ethoxide by salt metathesis.
Sodium ethoxide reacts readily with water and carbon dioxide in the air. [7] This causes stored samples to degrade over time, even in the solid state. The physical appearance of degraded samples may not be apparent, but sodium ethoxide samples gradually darken on storage. Even freshly obtained commercial batches of sodium ethoxide have been reported to show varying degrees of degradation and become a major source of irreproducibility when used in the Suzuki reaction.
In humid air, NaOEt rapidly hydrolyzes to sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The transformation is not obvious, typical NaOEt samples are contaminated by NaOH.
In moisture-free air, solid sodium ethoxide can fix carbon dioxide in the air to form sodium ethyl carbonate. Further reactions lead to degradation to various other sodium salts and diethyl ether. [7]
This instability can be prevented by storing the sodium ethoxide in an inert (N2) atmosphere.
Sodium ethoxide is a strong base and therefore corrosive.
The crystal structure of sodium ethoxide has been determined by X-ray crystallography. It consists of alternating central layers of Na+ and O-, with disordered ethyl groups covering the top and bottom of each layer. The B-base layers are stacked back to back to form a layered structure. The reaction of sodium and ethanol sometimes forms other products such as the solute NaOEt 2EtOH. Its crystal structure has been determined, although the structures of other phases in the Na/EtOH system remain unknown.
Ethanolate is an organic anion that is the conjugate base of ethanol. It has the effect of Saccharomyces cerevisiae metabolites and human metabolites. It is the conjugate base of ethanol.
