Dissociative chemisorption of methane on Ni(111) using a chemically accurate fifteen dimensional potential energy...

A fifteen-dimensional global potential energy surface for the dissociative chemisorption of methane on the rigid Ni(111) surface is developed by a high fidelity fit of ∼200 000 DFT energy points computed using a specific reaction parameter density functional designed to reproduce experimental data. The permutation symmetry and surface periodicity are rigorously enforced using the permutation invariant polynomial-neural network approach. The fitting accuracy of the potential energy surface is thoroughly investigated by examining both static and dynamical attributes of CHD₃ dissociation on the frozen surface. This potential energy surface is expected to be chemically accurate as after correction for surface temperature effects it reproduces the measured initial sticking probabilities of CHD₃ on Ni(111) for various incidence conditions.