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The authors report on studies of time-resolved photoelectron spectra of intramolecular proton transfer in the ground state of chloromalonaldehyde, employing ab initio photoionization matrix elements and effective potential surfaces of reduced dimensionality, wherein the couplings of proton motion to the other molecular vibrational modes are embedded by averaging over classical trajectories. In the simulations, population is transferred from the vibrational ground state to vibrationally hot wave packets by pumping to an excited electronic state and dumping with a time-delayed pulse. These pump-dump-probe simulations demonstrate that the time-resolved photoelectron spectra track proton transfer in the electronic ground state well and, furthermore, that the geometry dependence of the matrix elements enhances the tracking compared with signals obtained with the Condon approximation. Photoelectron kinetic energy distributions arising from wave packets localized in different basins are also distinguishable and could be understood, as expected, on the basis of the strength of the optical couplings in different regions of the ground state potential surface and the Franck-Condon overlaps of the ground state wave packets with the vibrational eigenstates of the ion potential surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on a simple but widely useful method for obtaining time-independent potential surfaces of reduced dimensionality wherein the coupling between reaction and substrate modes is embedded by averaging over an ensemble of classical trajectories. While these classically averaged potentials with their reduced dimensionality should be useful whenever a separation between reaction and substrate modes is meaningful, their use brings about significant simplification in studies of time-resolved photoelectron spectra in polyatomic systems where full-dimensional studies of skeletal and photoelectron dynamics can be prohibitive. Here we report on the use of these effective potentials in the studies of dump-probe photoelectron spectra of intramolecular proton transfer in chloromalonaldehyde. In these applications the effective potentials should provide a more realistic description of proton-substrate couplings than the sudden or adiabatic approximations commonly employed in studies of proton transfer. The resulting time-dependent photoelectron signals, obtained here assuming a constant value of the photoelectron matrix element for ionization of the wave packet, are seen to track the proton transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of destructive quantum interference in semiclassical quantization of molecular vibrational states is studied. This aspect is crucial for correct quantization, since failure in the appropriate treatment of destructive interference quite often results in many spurious peaks and broad background to hide the true peaks. We first study the time-Fourier transform of the autocorrelation function without performing summation over the trajectories. The resultant quantity, the prespectrum which is a function of individual classical trajectories, provides a clear view about how destructive interference among the trajectories should function. It turns out that the prespectrum is oscillatory but never a random noise. On the contrary, it bears a systematic and regular structure, which is sometimes characterized in terms of very sharp and high peaks in the energy space of the sampled classical trajectories. We have found an extended quantization condition that is responsible for generating these peaks in the prespectrum, which we call the prior quantization condition. Integration of the prespectrum over the trajectory space is supposed to give “zero” (practically a small value of the order of the Planck constant) at a noneigenvalue energy, which is actually a materialization of the destructive interference. Besides, certain finite peaks in the prespectrum survive after the integration to form the true spikes (eigenvalues) in the final spectrum, if they satisfy an additional resonance condition. For these resonance components, the prior quantization condition is reduced to the Einstein–Brillouin–Keller quantization condition. Based on these analyses, we propose a rather conventional filtering technique to efficiently handle tedious computation for destructive interference, and numerically verify that it works well even for multidimensional chaotic systems. This filtering technique is further utilized to extract a few trajectories that dominate an eigenstate of molecular vibration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the rapid progress in experiments of the tunneling dynamics in the time domain, we develop a quasisemiclassical method that is aimed at a study of the proton-transfer dynamics in a large system such as tropolone and its interesting derivatives, to which not only full quantum mechanics, but even a standard semiclassical theory is never easy to apply. In our very tractable method for multidimensional systems, the tunneling paths are generated in terms of the generalized classical mechanics [K. Takatsuka and H. Ushiyama, Phys. Rev. A 51, 4353 (1995)], but the quantum phases arising from the action integral, the Maslov index, and the semicalssical amplitude factor as well in the semiclassical kernels are entirely neglected. This approach is called the quasisemiclassical method. One of the technical issues involved in the general semiclassical scheme is how to locate points from which a tunneling path emanates. Hence the studies of such tunneling points and the quasisemiclassical method should be examined collectively. We test several ways of determining the tunneling point, including those already proposed in the literature and a newly proposed one. It is shown numerically that the quasisemiclassical method with an appropriate choice of tunneling points reproduces the full quantum mechanical tunneling probability reasonably well. This case study indicates that the present conventional approach is promising to the study of large systems. The role of tunneling points in the initial process of tunneling is also discussed. © 2004 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the mechanism of electron transfer at photosynthetic reaction centers. Convergence of calculated values required to estimate transfer integrals; Singlet excited states of free base porphin; Molecular in-out polarization; Singlet excited states of free base porphin.

Proposes a quasisemiclassical trajectory method for analyzing chemical reaction dynamics in multidimensional tunneling. Application of the theory to collinear reaction of H+H[sub 2]; Practices of the initial trajectory sampling; Analysis on the temperature dependence of the reaction probability; Estimation on the paths of dynamical tunneling.

Na2FePO4F is a promising cathode material for a Na‐ion battery because of its high electronic capacity and good cycle performance. In this work, first principle calculations combined with cluster expansion and the Monte Carlo method have been applied to analyze the charge and discharge processes of Na2FePO4F by examining the voltage curve and the phase diagram. As a result of the density functional theory calculation and experimental verification with structural analysis, we found that the most stable structure of Na1.5FePO4F has the P21/b11 space group, which has not been reported to date. The estimated voltage curve has two clear plateaus caused by the two‐phase structure composed of P21/b11 Na1.5FePO4F and Pbcn Na2FePO4F or Na1FePO4F and separated along the c‐axis direction. The phase diagram shows the stability of the phase‐separated structure. Considering that Na2FePO4F has diffusion paths in the a‐ and c‐axis directions, Na2FePO4F has both innerphase and interphase diffusion paths. We suggest that the stable two‐phase structure and the diffusion paths to both the innerphase and interphases are a key for the very clear plateau. We challenge to simulate a nonequilibrium state at high rate discharge with high temperature by introducing a coordinate‐dependent chemical potential. The simulation shows agreement with the experimental discharge curve on the disappearance of the two plateaus. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Na+ can diffuse through both inner‐ and interphase diffusion paths at a moderate rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the effects of multidimensionality in the quantum mechanical tunneling of chemical reactions. Development of a semiclassical theory to describe the tunneling by incorporating nonclassical solutions of the time-dependent Hamilton-Jacobi equation into the Feynman kernel; Typical tunneling reactions in collinear three atomic systems.

We propose a new implementation of Ehrenfest molecular dynamics based on the configuration interaction theory using configuration state functions (CSF) as basis set originally proposed by Amano and Takatsuka (J. Chem. Phys. 2005, 122, 084113). Our development consists of two independet new features. The first one deals with the problem on how to 'identify' the molecular orbitals at a simulation time step in terms of those at the previous time step. By giving an exact expression of CSF Ehrenfest method, this problem naturaly vanishes. To actually perform this method, the concept of molecular orbital connection which allows the MOs to be noncanonical is necessary. The second feature of our method is aimed to reduce the computational cost. We propose an approximaion to effectively perform the time propagation of the electron wavefunction. Due to the analogy to the locally diabatic representation method, we name our method locally quasi-diabatic representation method. In the present work, these two new features were combined and employed to perform test computations. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The possible mechanism of soot combustion catalyzed by potassium carbonate loaded on aluminosilicate was elucidated to understand the surface reaction in solid-solid-gas triphasic catalysis. Potassium species on aluminosilicate showed high catalytic performance for the oxidation of carbon black by gaseous oxygen. Aluminosilicate helped in stabilizing the alkali cation on the surface. The carbonate ion played a critical role in enhancing the catalytic performance by acting as a supplier of active electrons to gaseous oxygen. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the essential role of carbonate on the catalytic activity of an alkali cation for an oxidation reaction, although carbonate (carbon dioxide) is widely recognized to hinder the catalytic performance of the alkali compound for base-catalyzed reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the synthesis, structure, and hydrogen adsorption property of Li-doped mesoporous silica (MPS) with a 2D hexagonal structure. The Li-doping is achieved by impregnation of the cylindrical mesopores with an ethanol solution of lithium chloride followed by heat treatment. Detailed characterization by solid-state NMR, TG-MS, and FT-IR suggests that, during the heat treatment, lithium chloride reacts with surface ethoxy groups (≡Si-OEt) to form ≡SiOLi groups, while ethyl chloride is released into the gas phase. The hydrogen uptake at 77 K and 1 atm increases from 0.68 wt% for the undoped MPS to 0.81 wt% for Li-doped MPS (Li-MPS). The isosteric heat of adsorption is 4.8 kJ mol, which is consistent with the quantum chemistry calculation result (5.12 kJ mol). The specific hydrogen adsorption on Li-MPS would be explained by the frontier orbital interaction between HOMO of hydrogen molecules and LUMO of ≡SiOLi. These findings provide an important insight into the development of hydrogen storage materials with specific adsorption sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Helices have long attracted the attention of chemists, both for their inherent chiral structure and their potential for applications such as the separation of chiral compounds or the construction of molecular machines. As a result of steric forces, polymeric o-phenylenes adopt a tight helical conformation in which the densely packed phenylene units create a highly condensed π-cloud. Here, we show an oligomeric o-phenylene that undergoes a redox-responsive dynamic motion. In solution, the helices undergo a rapid inversion. During crystallization, however, a chiral symmetry-breaking phenomenon is observed in which each crystal contains only one enantiomeric form. Crystals of both handedness are obtained, but in a non-racemic mixture. Furthermore, in solution, the dynamic motion of the helical oligomer is dramatically suppressed by one-electron oxidation. X-ray crystallography of both the neutral and oxidized forms indicated that a hole, generated upon oxidation, is shared by the repeating o-phenylene units. This enables conformational locking of the helix, and represents a long-lasting chiroptical memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamics of double-proton transfer reaction in formic acid dimer is investigated by performing ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. From the viewpoint of optimized energetics alone, the synchronous (simultaneous) proton transfer is more favorable than the successive one. However, a full-dimensional classical dynamics shows that there is a certain time lag, about 8 fs in average, between two proton transfers. When a proton undergoes the first transfer, it moves from an oxygen with higher electron density to the counterpart having the lower one. The proton thus needs an energy sufficient enough to break the chemical bond, resulting in a clime of a potential barrier. On the other hand, the second proton moves from the lower electron-density oxygen atom to the higher one. Hence, the second proton is shifted predominantly by the thus-formed electronic field. Not only due to the time lag observed but mainly because of the difference in the mechanism of transfer, therefore, the present double-proton transfer is identified as successive. A detailed study on dynamics shows that the vibrational modes of the O–C–O skeletons dominate the second proton transfer. © 2001 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]