Monte-Carlo simulations of chemical reactions in molecular crystals

摘要

Chemical reactions in molecular crystals, yielding new entities (dimers, trimers,..., polymers) in the original structure, are simulated for the first time by stochastic Monte Carlo methods. The results are compared with those obtained by deterministic methods. They show that numerical simulation is a tool for understanding the evolution of these mixed systems. They are in kinetic and not in thermodynamic control. Reactive site distributions, x-ray diffuse scattering, and chain length distributions can be simulated. Comparisons are made with deterministic models and experimental results obtained in the case of the solid state dimerization of cinnamic acid in the beta phase and in the case of the solid state polymerization of diacetylenes.