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Updated: Jun 28, 2025

Multiscale Sampling of a Heterogeneous Water/Metal Catalyst Interface using Density Functional Theory and Force-Field Molecular Dynamics
Published on: April 12, 2019
First-principles mode-specific reaction dynamics
Gábor Czakó1, Balázs Gruber1, Dóra Papp1
1MTA-SZTE Lendület Computational Reaction Dynamics Research Group, Interdisciplinary Excellence Centre and Department of Physical Chemistry and Materials Science, Institute of Chemistry, University of Szeged, Rerrich Béla tér 1, Szeged H-6720, Hungary. gczako@chem.u-szeged.hu.
Abstract:
Controlling the outcome of chemical reactions by exciting specific vibrational and/or rotational modes of the reactants is one of the major goals of modern reaction dynamics studies. In the present Perspective, we focus on first-principles vibrational and rotational mode-specific dynamics computations on reactions of neutral and anionic systems beyond six atoms such as X + C2H6 [X = F, Cl, OH], HX + C2H5 [X = Br, I], OH- + CH3I, and F- + CH3CH2Cl. The dynamics simulations utilize high-level ab initio analytical potential energy surfaces and the quasi-classical trajectory method. Besides initial state specificity and the validity of the Polanyi rules, mode-specific vibrational-state assignment for polyatomic product species using normal-mode analysis and Gaussian binning is also discussed and compared with experiment.
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