Question

Why does ether act as a nucleophile?​

Answer 1

Ether act as a nucleophile:

• Ethers (ROR) involves ethereal oxygen with two lone pairs of electrons and acts like Lewis bases.
• As all bases are Nucleophiles but all the nucleophiles are not bases.
• It is ethereal oxygen with two lone pairs of electrons that attack concentrated. acid(protonic) to make oxonium salts.
• Attackers acids (lewis acids like BF3, AlCl3, etc) form complexes. Therefore, we can say that it acts as a nucleophile.

Hope it helped...