Potential energy surface

About: Potential energy surface is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11674 publications have been published within this topic receiving 307691 citations.

On the thermodynamic stability of clathrate hydrate. I

Abstract: The thermodynamic stability of a clathrate hydrate has been investigated by examining the free energy of formation of clathrate hydrate II encaging propane. The total free energy has been divided into several contributions—the interaction between water and guest propane molecules, the entropic contribution arising from the combinations of cage occupancy, and also the free energy due to intermolecular vibrations. The present method avoids some of the fundamental assumptions in the van der Waals and Platteeuw theory. This enables us to assess separately the factors which have a bearing on the thermodynamic stability of the hydrate. Kinetic stability has also been investigated by calculating molecular dynamics trajectories having initially excited several characteristic vibrational modes. We show, for propane in large cages, that the potential energy surface of the guest molecule in a cage has a single minimum and molecular motions can be approximated accurately to a collection of harmonic oscillators. It is...

Rotational excitation of SiO by collisions with helium

Abstract: Context. Within shocked regions of the interstellar medium and circumstellar environment of AGB stars the proper modelling of SiO line emission through non-LTE radiative transfer calculations requires accurate values of collisional rate coefficients. Aims. The present study focuses on the transitions among the rotational levels of the SiO molecule in its ground vibrational state induced by collision with He. The H 2 molecule being the main colliding partner for the astrophysical regions of interest, the collisional process between SiO and para-H 2 (j = 0) is also investigated in an approximated way. Methods. A new 2D SiO-He potential energy surface is computed by means of highly correlated ab initio calculations. Collisional rate coefficients corresponding to the pure rotational (de)excitation of SiO by collision with He are obtained from close-coupling quantum scattering calculations of inelastic cross sections. The SiO-He potential energy surface is also employed to compute rate coefficients for the rotational (de)excitation of SiO by collision with para-H 2 (j = 0). Results. Rate coefficients for rotational levels up to j = 26 and kinetic temperatures in the range 10-300 K are obtained for the SiO-He colliding system. The large asymmetry of the SiO-He potential energy surface induces a propensity rule that favours odd Δj transitions over even Δj. The estimated values of the SiO-para-H 2 (j = 0) rate coefficients are compared with those of Turner et al. (1992) for the twenty first rotational levels. As a result of significant differences between the SiO-He interaction potentials employed in the two studies, the rate coefficients are found to differ by a factor 2.5-5 for the main rotational transitions, whatever the temperature range.

Combined crossed molecular beam and theoretical studies of the N(2D) + CH4 reaction and implications for atmospheric models of Titan.

Abstract: The dynamics of the H-displacement channel in the reaction N(2D) + CH4 has been investigated by the crossed molecular beam (CMB) technique with mass spectrometric detection and time-of-flight (TOF) analysis at five different collision energies (from 22.2 up to 65.1 kJ/mol). The CMB results have identified two distinct isomers as primary reaction products, methanimine and methylnitrene, the yield of which significantly varies with the total available energy. From the derived center-of-mass product angular and translational energy distributions the reaction micromechanisms, the product energy partitioning and the relative branching ratios of the competing reaction channels leading to the two isomers have been obtained. The interpretation of the scattering results is assisted by new ab initio electronic structure calculations of stationary points and product energetics for the CH4N ground state doublet potential energy surface. Differently from previous theoretical studies, both insertion and H-abstraction p...

Ab initio study of hydrogen bonding in the phenol-water system

Abstract: Three hydrogen-bonded minima on the phenol-water, C6H5OH—H2O, potential energy surface were located with 3–21G and 6–31G** basis sets at both Hartree–Fock and MP2 levels of theory. MP2 binding energies were computed using large “correlation consistent” basis sets that included extra diffuse functions on all atoms. An estimate of the effect of expanding the basis set to the triple-zeta level (multiple f functions on carbon and oxygen and multiple d functions on hydrogen) was derived from calculations on a related prototype system. The best estimates of the electronic binding energies for the three minima are –7.8, –5.0, and –2.0 kcal/mol. The consequences of uncertainties in the geometries and limitations in the level of correlation recovery are analyzed. It is suggested that our best estimates will likely underestimate the complete basis set, full CI values by 0.1–0.3 kcal/mol. Vibrational normal modes were determined for all three minima, including an MP2/6–31G** analysis for the most strongly bound complex. Computational strategies for larger phenol–water complexes are discussed. © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.