A new extension of the polarizable continuum model: Toward a quantum chemical description of chemical reactions at extreme high pressure

A quantum chemical method for studying potential energy surfaces of reactive molecular systems at extreme high pressures is presented. The method is an extension of the standard Polarizable Continuum Model that is usually used for Quantum Chemical study of chemical reactions at a standard condition of pressure. The physical basis of the method and the corresponding computational protocol are described in necessary detail, and an application of the method to the dimerization of cyclopentadiene (up to 20 GPa) is reported. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Mechanism-based chemical understanding of chiral symmetry breaking in the Soai reaction. A combined probabilistic and deterministic description of chemical reactions

The experimentally observed distribution of enantiomers in the Soai reaction is interpreted in this Article on the basis of a chemical mechanism using a newly developed stochastic kinetic method, accelerated Monte Carlo simulation combined with deterministic continuation and symmetrization. The method is in principle suitable for handling large mechanisms with realistic particle numbers and could be useful for any case where the kinetics of a process shows inherent random fluctuations. The mechanism shows how a slow initial reaction combined with efficient and highly enantioselective autocatalysis can give rise to chiral symmetry breaking under completely nonchiral external conditions.     

Peripheral chemical reactions

Forward scattering of the products of direct exoergic atom transfer reactions is proposed as an indication for a peripheral attraction: a reaction in which an atom at the periphery of the reactants is abstracted. Model computations for the O(¹D) + N₂O reaction are used to illustrate the proposed mechanism. The opacity function has a peak at higher impact parameters which is correlated with the forward scattering. Potential energy surfaces which do not manifest peripheral attraction lead to backwards scattering of the products.     

Independence of chemical reactions

Up to this time the existence of physically true dependences between elementary reactions has been a returning question. The goal of this paper is to show that the real elementary reactions of a mechanism are practically independent. Introducing the concept of the space-time volume of a reaction (the reciprocal of the reaction rate) it is shown that, except for extremely fast processes (explosions), the reactions form very dilute systems. This systems must be ideal in the sense that interactions between elementary processes are very rare. The system exhibits some analogies with a dilute gas or solution. The extents of interactions can be calculated and the limits of independence estimated in this way.

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On the description of reactions in solution

A formulation for diffusion-influenced reactions in solution is given in which reactive and translational contributions are separated, steady state rate-limiting step formulations are generalized to the dynamical case and the influence of different experimental initial conditions is isolated.     

Redox reactions: inconsistencies in their description

The paper is aimed at defining reduction, oxidation, and redox reactions based both on the oxidation number and charge changes in reacting species. It is rationalized that the processes of oxidation and reduction, usually occurring simultaneously, can occur also as independent processes. It is explained that in balancing chemical equations of redox reactions the “gain” or “loss” of electrons should be understood as changes in oxidation number. A formal expressions “+n e^?” and “?n e^?” represent in reality a decrease and increase in oxidation number by n units, respectively.     

Laser control of chemical reactions

Chemical reactions are at the heart of chemistry and the dream of controlling the outcome of these reactions is an old one. Thus, with given reactants, a solvent and perhaps assisted by a catalyst, we would like to 'steer' the reactants into a particular desired product. This review focuses on how to control the dynamics of chemical reactions, beyond traditional temperature control, with the emphasis on unimolecular reactions. The electromagnetic radiation of lasers can induce so-called coherent dynamics. The recent theoretical and experimental results on this coherent control are explained and illustrated with computational and experimental examples.     

Dynamics of nonadiabatic chemical reactions

New methods are proposed to treat nonadiabatic chemical dynamics in realistic large molecular systems by using the Zhu-Nakamura (ZN) theory of curve-crossing problems. They include the incorporation of the ZN formulas into the Herman-Kluk type semiclassical wave packet propagation method and the trajectory surface hopping (TSH) method, formulation of the nonadiabatic transition state theory, and its application to the electron transfer problem. Because the nonadiabatic coupling is a vector in multidimensional space, the one-dimensional ZN theory works all right. Even the classically forbidden transitions can be correctly treated by the ZN formulas. In the case of electron transfer, a new formula that can improve the celebrated Marcus theory in the case of normal regime is obtained so that it can work nicely in the intermediate and strong electronic coupling regimes. All these formulations mentioned above are demonstrated to work well in comparison with the exact quantum mechanical numerical solutions and are expected to be applicable to large systems that cannot be treated quantum mechanically numerically exactly. To take into account another quantum mechanical effect, namely, the tunneling effect, an efficient method to detect caustics from which tunneling trajectories emanate is proposed. All the works reported here are the results of recent activities carried out in the author's research group. Finally, the whole set of ZN formulas is presented in Appendix.     

Consistent theoretical description of 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reactions

The cycloaddition reactions of 18 1,3-dipolar molecules to ethylene and acetylene have been reinvestigated by quantum chemical methods that are based on a second-order perturbation treatment of electron correlation. It is found that SCS-MP2 and the new perturbative B2-PLYP density functional provide accurate reaction barriers and outperform MP2 as well as standard density functionals such as B3-LYP. The new second-order based methods have the additional advantage that they perform better with increasing quality of the one-particle space, as is desired for a good quantum chemical method. The errors for the reaction enthalpies are in general larger than for the barriers when compared to CBS-QB3 literature values, which is related to strong changes in the electronic structures, but the deviations are again smaller than with MP2 or B3-LYP and are also more systematic. The results of a detailed basis set study suggest that properly polarized triple-zeta AO basis sets represent a good compromise between accuracy and computational speed. The combination of very inaccurate density functionals with small (double-zeta) basis sets, which yields good results for the initial part of the reactions due to error compensation, is not recommended.     

Short-time description of chemical reaction by Stochastic methods

For a double well potential, the Smoluchowski equation including a multiplicative noise is solved by a method that depends on a continued fraction expansion. The relation between the rate of escape over the barrier and a noise parameter is discussed. The method of solution used, being applicable to both short and long time scales, may be useful for the study of certain types of incubation times observed in chemical reactions.     

Infrared laser induced chemical reactions

It is shown that a high power infrared laser can enhance a chemical reaction (by lowering the activation energy) even if the reactants are infrared inactive.     

Valency changes in chemical reactions

An analysis of valence changes in selected organic gas phase reactions, calculated on SINDO1 potential surfaces, is performed. It is shown that transition states and intermediates have diradical character if singlet and triplets states are nearly degenerate. As a consequence, normal valencies are expected in Woodward-Hoffman allowed reactions and reduced valencies in forbidden reactions. The formalism is also applied to cationic reactions, but the effects of valency changes are less pronounced.     

Geometric factor in prototropic reactions of neutral and charged radicals

Conclusions The difference between the rate constants of thermodynamically favorable proton-transfer reactions between NH- and OH-containing radicals and heterocyclic bases and those diffusion-controlled reactions is due to the reactivity anisotropy of the reagents.Translated from Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, Seriya Khimicheskaya, No. 1, pp. 31–34, January, 1989.     

Novel type of oscillatory chemical reactions

Chemical oscillations occur during the uncatalyzed oxidation of a number of phenol and aniline derivatives by acidic bromate.

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