Ethers

Ethers are the third functional-group family built on the oxygen atom in this chapter, alongside alcohols and phenols. An ether carbon skeleton has the general form $\text{R–O–R}'$, where oxygen is bonded to two carbon-bearing groups instead of to a carbon and a hydrogen — this is what distinguishes it from an alcohol or a phenol and was already used to classify ethers back in the "Classification" section of this chapter.

The remaining part of the chapter looks at ethers from three angles, in the order the following sub-sections take it up:

• how ethers are actually made in the laboratory,
• the physical behaviour that follows from their structure — in particular, why they behave so differently from alcohols despite carrying the same oxygen atom, and
• the chemical reactions ethers undergo, which turn out to be far fewer than those of alcohols or phenols because the ether linkage is comparatively hard to break. …