Quantum chemistry and dynamics of the abstraction reaction of H atoms from formaldehyde

摘要

This work reports a reduced dimensionality rate constant calculation of the H-abstraction reaction from formaldehyde. Quantum scattering calculations are performed treating explicitly the bonds being broken and formed. Geometry optimisations and frequency calculations are done at the MP2/cc-pVTZ level while energies are calculated with the CCSD(T) method. An analytical potential energy surface was developed from a relatively small number of grid points. When compared to semi-classical approaches, the quantum scattering calculations show that quantum tunnelling yields large contributions at low temperatures. At 200 K, we note a difference of about 5 orders of magnitude between transition state theory (TST) and quantum rate constants. Our predicted results show that the quantum and the CVT/SCT rate constants are in reasonable agreement with the available experiment at high temperatures, but that the last one gives better agreement to experimental results at low temperatures. (C) 2016 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.