Study of Potential Energy Surfaces towards Global Reaction Route Mapping

Global Search for Stable C4H5NO Compounds-Guinness Molecules and Stability Islands

Global reaction route mapping (GRRM) analysis for compounds with the formula C₄H₅NO allowed for the detection of the corresponding "Guinness molecules" 000 and 001, as well as around 150 other stable minima of the same composition. The results suggest that compounds of similar functionality form a kind of "Stability Island" with their free energies of formation falling within s relatively limited range.

Investigation of the metastable structures of polyiodide in acetonitrile studied using global reaction route mapping and the reference interaction site model self-consistent field explicitly including constrained spatial electron density distribution

In this study, we theoretically analyzed the metastable structures of polyiodide (I₇^-) in the gas and acetonitrile phases using global reaction route mapping and the reference interaction site model self-consistent field explicitly including constrained spatial electron density distribution. From the chemical reaction pathways of I₇^- in acetonitrile, it was found that there would be 2 types of isomerization pathways. One proceeds with constant stoichiometry and the other takes place by breaking and forming I-I bonds. In addition, we discovered that I₇^- had various metastable structures within ∼10 kcal mol^-1. Comparing the most stable structure in the gas and acetonitrile phases, the tetrapot type is found to be the most stable structure in the gas phase; however, it is the zigzag type in acetonitrile. In order to understand this difference, we performed the decomposition analysis of the thermal correlation term in the gas and acetonitrile phases. It was found that thermal correction plays a key role in the stability and we could explain the difference in the population of the EQ states of I₇^- in each phase. Overall, we revealed that the solvation effect must be one of the crucial factors to stabilize the isomers of I₇^- and determine the chemical reaction pathways.

High performance global exploration of isomers and isomerization channels on quantum chemical potential energy surface of H5 C2 NO2

High performance global exploration of isomers and isomerization channels on the quantum chemical potential energy surface (PES) is performed for H₅ C₂ NO₂ by using the scaled hypersphere search-anharmonic downward distortion following (SHS-ADDF) method. A multi-node operation, NeoGRRM, has achieved high performance exploration calculations for the large system by submitting SHS-ADDF sub-jobs into many cores in parallel and unifying the results of sub-jobs into the total lists of the main-job. Global exploration of equilibrium (EQ) and transition-state structures at the level of B3LYP/6-31G(d) gave 3210 EQs and 23278 TSs. Nine compounds were found in the low energy regions of 0-100 kJ/mol; the lowest energy compound is N-methylcarbamic acid, the second is methyl carbamate, and the third is glycine (the most fundamental amino acid). Interconversion pathways between the conformers of each of the low energy compounds were surveyed. Isomerization channels around glycine were explored in detail. The lowest energy barriers around some of the EQs turned to be negative after zero-point energy corrections. This indicates that those structures cannot exist as independent structures because they spontaneously collapse into more stable structures. The global PES search showed various interesting dissociating channels which indicate synthon reaction pathways in the reverse directions.

Potential Energy Surface-Based Automatic Deduction of Conformational Transition Networks and Its Application on Quantum Mechanical Landscapes of d-Glucose Conformers

This paper describes our approach that is built upon the potential energy surface (PES)-based conformational analysis. This approach automatically deduces a conformational transition network, called a conformational reaction route map (r-map), by using the Scaled Hypersphere Search of the Anharmonic Downward Distortion Following method (SHS-ADDF). The PES-based conformational search has been achieved by using large ADDF, which makes it possible to trace only low transition state (TS) barriers while restraining bond lengths and structures with high free energy. It automatically performs sampling the minima and TS structures by simply taking into account the mathematical feature of PES without requiring any a priori specification of variable internal coordinates. An obtained r-map is composed of equilibrium (EQ) conformers connected by reaction routes via TS conformers, where all of the reaction routes are already confirmed during the process of the deduction using the intrinsic reaction coordinate (IRC) method. The postcalculation analysis of the deduced r-map is interactively carried out using the RMapViewer software we have developed. This paper presents computational details of the PES-based conformational analysis and its application to d-glucose. The calculations have been performed for an isolated glucose molecule in the gas phase at the RHF/6-31G level. The obtained conformational r-map for α-d-glucose is composed of 201 EQ and 435 TS conformers and that for β-d-glucose is composed of 202 EQ and 371 TS conformers. For the postcalculation analysis of the conformational r-maps by using the RMapViewer software program we have found multiple minimum energy paths (MEPs) between global minima of ¹C₄ and ⁴C₁ chair conformations. The analysis using RMapViewer allows us to confirm the thermodynamic and kinetic predominance of ⁴C₁ conformations; that is, the potential energy of the global minimum of ⁴C₁ is lower than that of ¹C₄ (thermodynamic predominance) and that the highest energy of those of all the TS structures along a route from ⁴C₁ to ¹C₄ is lower than that of ¹C₄ to ⁴C₁ (kinetic predominance).