An improvement of the Li+HF PES based on a 3D quasiclassical trajectory test

Li + HF and Li + HCl Reactions Revisited I: QCT Calculations and Simulation of Experimental Results

The Li + HF and Li + HCl reactions share some common features. They have the same kinematics, relatively small barrier heights, bent transition states, and are both exothermic when the zero point energy is considered. Nevertheless, the pioneering crossed beam experiments by Lee and co-workers in the 80s (Becker et al., J. Chem. Phys. 1980, 73, 2833) revealed that the dynamics of the two reactions differ significantly, especially at low collision energies. In this work, we present theoretical simulations of their results in the laboratory frame (LAB), based on quasiclassical trajectories and obtained using accurate potential energy surfaces. The calculated LAB angular distributions and time-of-flight spectra agree well with the raw experimental data, although our simulations do not reproduce the experimentally derived center-of-mass (CM) differential cross section and velocity distributions. The latter were derived by forward convolution fitting under the questionable assumption that the CM recoil velocity and scattering angle distribution were uncoupled, while our results show that the coupling between them is relevant. Some important insights into the reaction mechanism discussed in the article by Becker et al. had not been contrasted with those that can be extracted from the theoretical results. Among them, the correlation between the angular momenta involved in the reactions has also been examined. Given the kinematics of both systems, the reagent orbital angular momentum, l , is almost completely transformed into the rotation of the product diatom, j'. However, contrary to the coplanar mechanism proposed in the original paper, we find that the initial and final relative orbital angular momenta are not necessarily parallel. Both reactions are found to be essentially direct, although about 15% of the LiFH complexes live longer than 200 fs.

INFLUENCE OF THE COLLISION ENERGY ON STEREODYNAMICS OF THE F + LiH (v = 0, j = 0) → LiF + H REACTION

The stereodynamics of the title reaction based on the ground 2A′ potential energy surface (PES) has been investigated using the method of the quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) at different collision energies (23 kcal/mol, 35 kcal/mol and 46 kcal/mol). The vector properties of the angular momentum (described by the distribution of K - J′P(θr), the dihedral angle distribution of K - K′ - J′P(φr) and the angular distribution P(θr, ϕr)) and the four PDDCSs [(2π/σ)(dσ00/dωt), (2π/σ)(dσ20/dωt), (2π/σ)(dσ22+/dωt), (2π/σ)(dσ21-/dωt)] of the product LiF at each collision energy have been presented, respectively. Further, the collision energy effects on the behavior of the product LiF have been discussed and studied.