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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Isotopic Effect in Double Proton Transfer Process of Porphycene Investigated by Enhanced QM/MM Method
Published on: July 19, 2019
Internal proton transfer and H2 rotations in the H5(+) cluster: a marked influence on its thermal equilibrium state
Ricardo Pérez de Tudela1, Patricia Barragán, Rita Prosmiti
1Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC, Madrid, Spain.
Abstract:
Classical and path integral Monte Carlo (CMC, PIMC) "on the fly" calculations are carried out to investigate anharmonic quantum effects on the thermal equilibrium structure of the H5(+) cluster. The idea to follow in our computations is based on using a combination of the above-mentioned nuclear classical and quantum statistical methods, and first-principles density functional (DFT) electronic structure calculations. The interaction energies are computed within the DFT framework using the B3(H) hybrid functional, specially designed for hydrogen-only systems. The global minimum of the potential is predicted to be a nonplanar configuration of C(2v) symmetry, while the next three low-lying stationary points on the surface correspond to extremely low-energy barriers for the internal proton transfer and to the rotation of the H2 molecules, around the C2 axis of H5(+), connecting the symmetric C(2v) minima in the planar and nonplanar orientations. On the basis of full-dimensional converged PIMC calculations, results on the quantum vibrational zero-point energy (ZPE) and state of H5(+) are reported at a low temperature of 10 K, and the influence of the above-mentioned topological features of the surface on its probability distributions is clearly demonstrated.
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