Computational study on fluorine atom reaction with silane molecule (SiH4)

The fluorine atom’s reaction with silane molecule (SiH₄) is investigated in this work. Two reaction channels which form SiH₃+HF and SiH₃F+H are discussed in the microscopic level. The analyses of transition states show that the SiH₃+HF channel proceeds through a direct hydrogen abstract mechanism and the SiH₃F+H channel could take place via the substitution mechanism. The energetic information of the potential energy surface has been obtained using high-level ab initio molecular orbital theory. A dual-level direct dynamics method is employed to calculate the rate constants of the title reaction. The rate constants of the hydrogen abstraction channel are much larger than the substitution channel. The calculated rate constants are in best agreement with available experimental result.