This Perspective presents a personal overview of the current status of the theory of chemical kinetics and mechanisms for complex processes. We attempt to assess the status of the field for reactions in the gas phase, at gas-solid interfaces, in liquid solutions, in enzymes, and for protein folding. Some unifying concepts such as potential energy surfaces, free energy, master equations, and reaction coordinates occur in more than one area. We hope this Perspective will be useful for highlighting recent advances and for identifying important areas for future research.

Chemical kinetics and mechanisms of complex systems: A perspective on recent theoretical advances

Water dissociation on transition-metal catalysts is an important step in steam reforming and the water-gas shift reaction. To probe the effect of translational and vibrational activation on this important heterogeneous reaction, we performed state-resolved gas/surface reactivity measurements for the dissociative chemisorption of D2O on Ni(111), using molecular beam techniques. The reaction occurs via a direct pathway, because both the translational and vibrational energies promote the dissociation. The experimentally measured initial sticking probabilities were used to calibrate a first-principles potential energy surface based on density functional theory. Quantum dynamical calculations on the scaled potential energy surface reproduced the experimental results semiquantitatively. The larger increase of the dissociation probability by vibrational excitation than by translation per unit of energy is consistent with a late barrier along the O-D stretch reaction coordinate.

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Vibrationally promoted dissociation of water on Ni(111).

We review the state-of-the art in dynamics calculations on the reactive scattering of H2 from metal surfaces, which is an important model system of an elementary reaction that is relevant to heterogeneous catalysis. In many applications, quantum dynamics and classical trajectory calculations are performed within the Born–Oppenheimer static surface model. However, ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) is finding increased use in applications aimed at modeling the effect of surface phonons on the dynamics. Molecular dynamics with electronic friction has been used to model the effect of electron–hole pair excitation. Most applications are still based on potential energy surfaces (PESs) or forces computed with density functional theory (DFT), using a density functional within the generalized gradient approximation to the exchange–correlation energy. A new development is the use of a semi-empirical version of DFT (the specific reaction parameter (SRP) approach to DFT). We also discuss the accurate methods that have become available to represent electronic structure data for the molecule–surface interaction in global PESs. It has now become possible to describe highly activated H2 + metal surface reactions with chemical accuracy using the SRP-DFT approach, as has been shown for H2 + Cu(111) and Cu(100). However, chemical accuracy with SRP-DFT has yet to be demonstrated for weakly activated systems like H2 + Ru(0001) and non-activated systems like H2 + Pd(111), for which SRP DFs are not yet available. There is now considerable evidence that electron–hole pair (ehp) excitation does not need to be modeled to achieve the (chemically) accurate calculation of dissociative chemisorption and scattering probabilities. Dynamics calculations show that phonons can be safely neglected in the chemically accurate calculation of sticking probabilities on cold metal surfaces for activated systems, and in the calculation of a number of other observables. However, there is now sufficient evidence to suggest that the decision on whether or not to neglect phonons should be taken with care, with appropriate consideration of the observable to be computed and of the relevant surface temperature. AIMD calculations have provided valuable insights into the mechanisms that are operative in the dissociative adsorption and absorption of hydrogen on/in precovered metal surfaces. Classical and quantum dynamics calculations have shown that the reaction probability of H2 on Pt surfaces consisting of (100) steps and (111) terraces can to a very good approximation be computed as a weighted average of the reactivities on the steps and terraces. Progress obtained with dynamics calculations on the scattering of H2 from alloys and from simple low index metal surfaces is also reported. Insights that may be obtained on the reactivity of a metal surface from the prominent presence of out-of-plane diffraction or, conversely, the complete absence of diffraction, are discussed. A new field has been opened up by experiments on H2 scattering from surfaces at fast grazing incidence, and we discuss new predictions regarding diffraction and dissociative scattering of H2 under such conditions.

Quantum and classical dynamics of reactive scattering of H2 from metal surfaces.

Although important to heterogeneous catalysis, the ability to accurately model reactions of polyatomic molecules with metal surfaces has not kept pace with developments in gas phase dynamics. Partnering the specific reaction parameter (SRP) approach to density functional theory with ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) extends our ability to model reactions with metals with quantitative accuracy from only the lightest reactant, H2, to essentially all molecules. This is demonstrated with AIMD calculations on CHD3 + Ni(111) in which the SRP functional is fitted to supersonic beam experiments, and validated by showing that AIMD with the resulting functional reproduces initial-state selected sticking measurements with chemical accuracy (4.2 kJ/mol ≈ 1 kcal/mol). The need for only semilocal exchange makes our scheme computationally tractable for dissociation on transition metals.

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Chemically Accurate Simulation of a Polyatomic Molecule-Metal Surface Reaction.

While the performance of density functional approximations (DFAs) for gas phase reaction energetics has been extensively benchmarked, their reliability for activation barriers on surfaces is not fully understood. The primary reason for this is the absence of well-defined, chemically accurate benchmark databases for chemistry on surfaces. We present a database of 10 surface barrier heights for dissociation of small molecules, SBH10, based on carefully chosen references from molecular beam scattering, laser assisted associative desorption, and thermal experiments. Our benchmarking study compares the performance of a dispersion-corrected generalized gradient approximation (GGA-vdW), BEEF-vdW, a meta-GGA, MS2, and a screened hybrid functional, HSE06. In stark contrast to gas phase reactions for which GGAs systematically underestimate barrier heights and hybrids tend to be most accurate, the BEEF-vdW functional determines barriers accurately to within 0.14 eV of experiments, while MS2 and HSE06 underestimate b...

https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A3146107/view

SBH10 : A Benchmark Database of Barrier Heights on Transition Metal Surfaces

We present new experimental and theoretical results for reactive scattering of dihydrogen from Cu(100). In the new experiments, the associative desorption of H2 is studied in a velocity resolved and final rovibrational state selected manner, using time-of-flight techniques in combination with resonance-enhanced multi-photon ionization laser detection. Average desorption energies and rotational quadrupole alignment parameters were obtained in this way for a number of (v = 0, 1) rotational states, v being the vibrational quantum number. Results of quantum dynamics calculations based on a potential energy surface computed with a specific reaction parameter (SRP) density functional, which was derived earlier for dihydrogen interacting with Cu(111), are compared with the results of the new experiments and with the results of previous molecular beam experiments on sticking of H2 and on rovibrationally elastic and inelastic scattering of H2 and D2 from Cu(100). The calculations use the Born-Oppenheimer and static surface approximations. With the functional derived semi-empirically for dihydrogen + Cu(111), a chemically accurate description is obtained of the molecular beam experiments on sticking of H2 on Cu(100), and a highly accurate description is obtained of rovibrationally elastic and inelastic scattering of D2 from Cu(100) and of the orientational dependence of the reaction of (v = 1, j = 2 − 4) H2 on Cu(100). This suggests that a SRP density functional derived for H2 interacting with a specific low index face of a metal will yield accurate results for H2 reactively scattering from another low index face of the same metal, and that it may also yield accurate results for H2 interacting with a defected (e.g., stepped) surface of that same metal, in a system of catalytic interest. However, the description that was obtained of the average desorption energies, of rovibrationally elastic and inelastic scattering of H2 from Cu(100), and of the orientational dependence of reaction of (v = 0, j = 3 − 5, 8) H2 on Cu(100) compares less well with the available experiments. More research is needed to establish whether more accurate SRP-density functional theory dynamics results can be obtained for these observables if surface atom motion is added to the dynamical model. The experimentally and theoretically found dependence of the rotational quadrupole alignment parameter on the rotational quantum number provides evidence for rotational enhancement of reaction at low translational energies.

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Reactive scattering of H2 from Cu(100): comparison of dynamics calculations based on the specific reaction parameter approach to density functional theory with experiment

L. Sementa

Papers

Reactive scattering of H2 from Cu(100): comparison of dynamics calculations based on the specific reaction parameter approach to density functional theory with experiment