Formation mechanism and spectroscopy of C₆H radicals in extreme environments: a theoretical study

This study examined the reaction mechanisms of singlet (rhombic) and triplet (linear) C4 with acetylene by using accurate ab initio CCSD(T)/CBS//B3LYP/6-311G(d,p) calculations followed by a kinetic analysis of various reaction pathways and computations of relative product yields in combustion and planetary atmospheres. These calculations were combined with the Rice-Ramsperger-Kassel-Marcus (RRKM) calculations of reaction rate constants for predicting product-branching ratios, which depend on the collision energy under single-collision conditions. The results demonstrate that the initial reaction begins with the formation of an intermediate 3i2 with an entrance barrier of 3.0 kcal mol-1 and an intermediate 1i1 without entrance barriers. The product-branching ratios obtained by solving kinetic equations with individual rate constants calculated using the RRKM and variational transition-state theories for determining the collision energies between 5 kcal mol-1 and 25 kcal mol-1 demonstrate that l-C6H + H is the dominant reaction product, whereas HC3C3 + H, l-C6 + H2, c-C6H + H, and c-C6 + H2 are minor products. The electronic absorption spectra of solid neon matrices in the range of 17 140-22 200 cm-1 were obtained by Maier et al., and the optimized ground and excited state structures of C6H were used to simulate the absorption spectra by one-photon excitation equations. The displaced harmonic oscillator approximation and the Franck-Condon approximation were used to simulate the absorption spectrum of the B2Π ← X2Π transition of C6H. This indicates that the vibronic structures were dominated by one of the six active completely symmetric modes, with v3 being the most crucial.