Reactions of Chemically Activated Formic Acid Formed via HĊO + ȮH

Atomic Partial Charges as Descriptors for Barrier Heights

Atomic partial charges are found to be valuable descriptors for barrier heights of unimolecular reactions due to the considerable information about the electronic structure embedded in them. If the chemical changes of the reactions are somewhat centralized at a single atom, the respective partial charge is a potentially meaningful descriptor and might outperform bond dissociation energies as descriptors. We propose that atomic partial charges should be considered as barrier height descriptors in future research.

Correcting Rate Constants from Anharmonic Molecular Dynamics for Quantum Effects

Anharmonicity can greatly affect rate constants. One or even several orders of magnitude of deviation are found for obtaining rate constants using the standard rigid-rotor harmonic-oscillator model. In turn, reactive molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are a powerful way to explore chemical reaction networks and calculate rate constants from the fully anharmonic potential energy surface. However, the classical nature of the dynamics and the required numerical efficiency of the force field limit the accuracy of the resulting kinetics. We combine the best of both worlds by presenting an approximation that pairs anharmonic information intrinsic to classical MD with high-accuracy energies and frequencies from quantum-mechanical electronic structure calculations. The proposed scheme is applied to hydrogen abstractions in the methane system, which allows for the benchmarking of rate constants corrected by our approach against experimental rate constants. This comparison reveals a standard deviation of factor 2.6. Two archetypes of possible failure are identified in the course of a detailed investigation of the CH₃ ^• + H^• → CH₂ ^2• + H₂ reaction. From this follows the application range of the method, within which the method shows a standard deviation of factor 2.1. The computational efficiency and beneficial scaling of the method allow for application to larger systems, as shown for hydrogen abstraction from 2-butanone by HO₂ ^•.

Pressure-Dependent Rate Constant Predictions Utilizing the Inverse Laplace Transform: A Victim of Deficient Input Data

k(E) can be calculated either from the Rice-Ramsperger-Kassel-Marcus theory or by inverting macroscopic rate constants k(T). Here, we elaborate the inverse Laplace transform approach for k(E) reconstruction by examining the impact of k(T) data fitting accuracy. For this approach, any inaccuracy in the reconstructed k(E) results from inaccurate/incomplete k(T) description. Therefore, we demonstrate how an improved mathematical description of k(T) data leads to accurate k(E) data. Refitting inaccurate/incomplete k(T), hence, allows for recapturing k(T) information that yields more accurate k(E) reconstructions. The present work suggests that accurate representation of experimental and theoretical k(T) data in a broad temperature range could be used to obtain k(T,p). Thus, purely temperature-dependent kinetic models could be converted into fully temperature- and pressure-dependent kinetic models.

Automated Chemical Kinetic Modeling via Hybrid Reactive Molecular Dynamics and Quantum Chemistry Simulations

An automated scheme for obtaining chemical kinetic models from scratch using reactive molecular dynamics and quantum chemistry simulations is presented. This methodology combines the phase space sampling of reactive molecular dynamics with the thermochemistry and kinetics prediction capabilities of quantum mechanics. This scheme provides the NASA polynomial and modified Arrhenius equation parameters for all species and reactions that are observed during the simulation and supplies them in the ChemKin format. The ab initio level of theory for predictions is easily exchangeable, and the presently used G3MP2 level of theory is found to reliably reproduce hydrogen and methane oxidation thermochemistry and kinetics data. Chemical kinetic models obtained with this approach are ready to use for, e.g., ignition delay time simulations, as shown for hydrogen combustion. The presented extension of the ChemTraYzer approach can be used as a basis for methodological advancement of chemical kinetic modeling schemes and as a black-box approach to generate chemical kinetic models.

Discussion of the Separation of Chemical and Relaxational Kinetics of Chemically Activated Intermediates in Master Equation Simulations

Chemical activation of intermediates, such as hydrogen abstraction products, is emerging as a basis for a fully new reaction type: hot β-scission. While for thermally equilibrated intermediates chemical kinetics are typically orders of magnitude slower than relaxational kinetics, chemically activated intermediates raise the issue of inseparable chemical and relaxational kinetics. Here, this separation problem is discussed in the framework of master equation simulations, proposing three cases often encountered in chemistry: insignificant chemical activation, predominant chemical activation, and the transition between these two limits. These three cases are illustrated via three example systems: methoxy (CH₃Ȯ), diazenyl (ṄNH), and methyl formate radicals (CH₃OĊO). For diazenyl, it is found that hot β-scission fully replaces the sequence of hydrogen abstraction and β-scission of thermally equilibrated diazenyl. Building on the example systems, a rule of thumb is proposed that can be used to intuitively judge the significance of hot β-scission: if the reverse hydrogen abstraction barrier height is comparable to or larger than the β-scission barrier height, hot β-scission should be considered in more detail.