Cyclooctyne-based reagents for uncatalyzed click chemistry: A computational survey

With the goal of identifying alkyne-like reagents for use in click chemistry, but without Cu catalysts, we used B3LYP density function theory (DFT) to investigate the trends in activation barriers for the 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions of azides with various cyclooctyne, dibenzocyclooctyne, and azacyclooctyne compounds. Based on these trends, we find monobenzocyclooctyne-based reagents that are predicted to have dramatically improved reactivity over currently employed reagents

Initiation mechanisms and kinetics of pyrolysis and combustion of JP-10 hydrocarbon jet fuel

In order to investigate the initiation mechanisms and kinetics associated with the pyrolysis of JP-10 (exo-tricyclo[5.2.1.0^2,6]decane), a single-component hydrocarbon jet fuel, we carried out molecular dynamics (MD) simulations employing the ReaxFF reactive force field. We found that the primary decomposition reactions involve either (1) dissociation of ethylene from JP-10, resulting in the formation of a C8 hydrocarbon intermediate, or (2) the production of two C5 hydrocarbons. ReaxFF MD leads to good agreement with experiment for the product distribution as a function of temperature. On the basis of the rate of consumption of JP-10, we calculate an activation energy of 58.4 kcal/mol for the thermal decomposition of this material, which is consistent with a strain-facilitated C−C bond cleavage mechanism in JP-10. This compares well with the experimental value of 62.4 kcal/mol. In addition, we carried out ReaxFF MD studies of the reactive events responsible for oxidation of JP-10. Here we found overall agreement between the thermodynamic energies obtained from ReaxFF and quantum-mechanical calculations, illustrating the usefulness of ReaxFF for studying oxidation of hydrocarbons. The agreement of these results with available experimental observations demonstrates that ReaxFF can provide useful insights into the complicated thermal decomposition and oxidation processes of important hydrocarbon fuels

The ReaxFF Monte Carlo Reactive Dynamics Method for Predicting Atomistic Structures of Disordered Ceramics: Application to the Mo_3VO_x Catalyst

The ReaxFF computational approach is used to resolve partial or mixed occupation of crystallographic sites of the Mo_3VO_x multimetal oxide (MMO) catalyst. It provides insight into the oxidation state and coordination environment of the metal sites, identifies donor-acceptor networks in the catalyst, and predicts selectivity for molecular diffusion into channels of the framework

ReaxFF Reactive Force Field for Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Hydrocarbon Oxidation

To investigate the initial chemical events associated with high-temperature gas-phase oxidation of hydrocarbons, we have expanded the ReaxFF reactive force field training set to include additional transition states and chemical reactivity of systems relevant to these reactions and optimized the force field parameters against a quantum mechanics (QM)-based training set. To validate the ReaxFF potential obtained after parameter optimization, we performed a range of NVT−MD simulations on various hydrocarbon/O_2 systems. From simulations on methane/O_2, o-xylene/O_2, propene/O_2, and benzene/O_2 mixtures, we found that ReaxFF obtains the correct reactivity trend (propene > o-xylene > methane > benzene), following the trend in the C−H bond strength in these hydrocarbons. We also tracked in detail the reactions during a complete oxidation of isolated methane, propene, and o-xylene to a CO/CO_2/H_2O mixture and found that the pathways predicted by ReaxFF are in agreement with chemical intuition and our QM results. We observed that the predominant initiation reaction for oxidation of methane, propene, and o-xylene under fuel lean conditions involved hydrogen abstraction of the methyl hydrogen by molecular oxygen forming hydroperoxyl and hydrocarbon radical species. While under fuel rich conditions with a mixture of these hydrocarbons, we observed different chemistry compared with the oxidation of isolated hydrocarbons including a change in the type of initiation reactions, which involved both decomposition of the hydrocarbon or attack by other radicals in the system. Since ReaxFF is capable of simulating complicated reaction pathways without any preconditioning, we believe that atomistic modeling with ReaxFF provides a useful method for determining the initial events of oxidation of hydrocarbons under extreme conditions and can enhance existing combustion models

Simulations on the Thermal Decomposition of a Poly(dimethylsiloxane) Polymer Using the ReaxFF Reactive Force Field

To investigate the failure of the poly(dimethylsiloxane) polymer (PDMS) at high temperatures and pressures and in the presence of various additives, we have expanded the ReaxFF reactive force field to describe carbon−silicon systems. From molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using ReaxFF we find initial thermal decomposition products of PDMS to be CH_3 radical and the associated polymer radical, indicating that decomposition and subsequent cross-linking of the polymer is initiated by Si−C bond cleavage, in agreement with experimental observations. Secondary reactions involving these CH_3 radicals lead primarily to formation of methane. We studied temperature and pressure dependence of PDMS decomposition by following the rate of production of methane in the ReaxFF MD simulations. We tracked the temperature dependency of the methane production to extract Arrhenius parameters for the failure modes of PDMS. Furthermore, we found that at increased pressures the rate of PDMS decomposition drops considerably, leading to the formation of fewer CH_3 radicals and methane molecules. Finally, we studied the influence of various additives on PDMS stability. We found that the addition of water or a SiO_2 slab has no direct effect on the short-term stability of PDMS, but addition of reactive species such as ozone leads to significantly lower PDMS decomposition temperature. The addition of nitrogen monoxide does not significantly alter the degradation temperature but does retard the initial production of methane and C_2 hydrocarbons until the nitrogen monoxide is depleted. These results, and their good agreement with available experimental data, demonstrate that ReaxFF provides a useful computational tool for studying the chemical stability of polymers

Development and Application of a ReaxFF Reactive Force Field for Oxidative Dehydrogenation on Vanadium Oxide Catalysts

We have developed a new ReaxFF reactive force field to describe accurately reactions of hydrocarbons with vanadium oxide catalysts. The ReaxFF force field parameters have been fit to a large quantum mechanics (QM) training set containing over 700 structures and energetics related to bond dissociations, angle and dihedral distortions, and reactions between hydrocarbons and vanadium oxide clusters. In addition, the training set contains charge distributions for small vanadium oxide clusters and the stabilities of condensed-phase systems. We find that ReaxFF reproduces accurately the QM training set for structures and energetics of small clusters. Most important is that ReaxFF describes accurately the energetics for various oxidation states of the condensed phases, including V_2O_5, VO_2, and V_2O_3 in addition to metallic V(V^0). To demonstrate the capability of the ReaxFF force field for describing catalytic processes involving vanadium oxides, we performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulation for reactions of a gas of methanol exposed to the (001) surface of V_2O_5. We find that formaldehyde is the major product, in agreement with experiment. These studies find that water desorption from surface VIII sites is facilitated by interlayer bonding

Single-Site Vanadyl Activation, Functionalization, and Reoxidation Reaction Mechanism for Propane Oxidative Dehydrogenation on the Cubic V_4O_(10)Cluster

Vanadyl oxide (V═O) sites are thought to play a role in a number of industrially important catalysts for activating saturated alkanes, but in no system is the mechanism for the activation, product formation, and reoxidation steps established. In this paper, we use quantum mechanical methods (B3LYP flavor of density functional theory) to examine the detailed mechanism for propane reacting with a V_4O_(10) cluster to model the catalytic oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of propane on the V_2O_5(001) surface. We here report the mechanism of the complete catalytic cycle, including the regeneration of the reduced catalyst using gaseous O_2. The rate-determining step is hydrogen abstraction by the vanadyl (V═O) group (in agreement with experiment) to form an iso-propyl radical that binds to an adjacent V−O−V site. Subsequently, this bound iso-propyl forms propene product by β-hydride elimination to form bound H_2O. We find that this H_2O (bound to a V^(III) site) is too stable to desorb unimolecularly. Instead, the desorption is induced by binding of gaseous O_2 to the V^(III) site, which dramatically decreases the coordination energy of H_2O from 37.8 to 12.9 kcal/mol. Further rearrangement of the O_2 molecule leads to formation of a cyclic VO_2 peroxide, which activates the C−H bond of a second propane to form a second propene (with a lower reaction barrier). Desorption of this propene regenerates the original V_4O_(10) cluster. We find that all reactions involve the single vanadyl oxygen (V═O), with the bridging oxygens (V−O−V) serving to stabilize the iso-propyl radical intermediate. We refer to this mechanism as the single-site vanadyl activation, functionalization, and reoxidation mechanism (SS-VAFR). This SS-VAFR mechanism should be applicable to propane ODH on the supported vanadium oxide catalysts where only monovanadate (VO_4) species are present