In the present work, we study the H atom abstraction reactions by hydroxyl radical at all five sites of 1-butanol. Multistructural variational transition state theory (MS-VTST) was employed to estimate the five thermal rate constants. MS-VTST utilizes a multifaceted dividing surface that accounts for the multiple conformational structures of the transition state, and we also include all the structures of the reactant molecule. The vibrational frequencies and minimum energy paths (MEPs) were computed using the M08-HX/MG3S electronic structure method. The required potential energy surfaces were obtained implicitly by direct dynamics employing interpolated variational transition state theory with mapping (IVTST-M) using a variational reaction path algorithm. The M08-HX/MG3S electronic model chemistry was then used to calculate multistructural torsional anharmonicity factors to complete the MS-VTST rate constant calculations. The results indicate that torsional anharmonicity is very important at higher temperatures, and neglecting it would lead to errors of 26 and 32 at 1000 and 1500 K, respectively. Our results for the sums of the site-specific rate constants agree very well with the experimental values of Hanson and co-workers at 896-1269 K and with the experimental results of Campbell et al. at 292 K, but slightly less well with the experiments of Wallington et al., Nelson et al., and Yujing and Mellouki at 253-372 K; nevertheless, the calculated rates are within a factor of 1.61 of all experimental values at all temperatures. This gives us confidence in the site-specific values, which are currently inaccessible to experiment.

The kinetics of the hydrogen abstraction from 2-butanol by hydroxyl radical have been studied using multipath variational transition-state theory with the multidimensional small curvature tunneling approximation. The rate constants for each of the five hydrogen abstraction sites (C1, C2, C3, C4, and O) and the overall reaction have been computed by direct dynamics based on M08-HX/6-311+G(2df,2p) electronic structure calculations. We show that multistructural torsional anharmonicity, anharmonicity differences of high-frequency modes between the transition structures and the reactants, and reaction-path dependence of multiple reaction paths are all important factors for determining accurate reaction rates and branching fractions for this problem. The reaction barrier heights for abstraction from various sites follow the order C2 < C3 < C4 < C1 < O, but the reactivities of the various sites do not precisely follow the inverse order of barrier heights, and the order of reactivities depends on temperature. The abstractions from C2 and C3 have the largest contribution to the total reaction rate from 200 to 2000 K.

The correlation consistent Composite Approach, ccCA [ Deyonker , N. J. ; Cundari , T. R. ; Wilson , A. K. J. Chem. Phys. 2006 , 124 , 114104 ] has been demonstrated to predict accurate thermochemical properties of chemical species that can be described by a single configurational reference state, and at reduced computational cost, as compared with ab initio methods such as CCSD(T) used in combination with large basis sets. We have developed three variants of a multireference equivalent of this successful theoretical model. The method, called the multireference correlation consistent composite approach (MR-ccCA), is designed to predict the thermochemical properties of reactive intermediates, excited state species, and transition states to within chemical accuracy (e.g., 1 kcal/mol for enthalpies of formation) of reliable experimental values. In this study, we have demonstrated the utility of MR-ccCA: (1) in the determination of the adiabatic singlet-triplet energy separations and enthalpies of formation for the ground states for a set of diradicals and unsaturated compounds, and (2) in the prediction of energetic barriers to internal rotation, in ethylene and its heavier congener, disilene. Additionally, we have utilized MR-ccCA to predict the enthalpies of formation of the low-lying excited states of all the species considered. MR-ccCA is shown to give quantitative results without reliance upon empirically derived parameters, making it suitable for application to study novel chemical systems with significant nondynamical correlation effects.

A multi-level multi-layer QM/QM method, the relativistic pseudopotential correlation-consistent composite approach within an ONIOM framework (rp-ccCA-ONIOM), was applied to study the oxidative addition of the C(α)-C(β) bond in an archetypal arylglycerol β-aryl ether (β-O-4 linkage) substructure of lignin to Ni, Cu, Pd and Pt transition metal atoms. The chemically active high-level layer is treated using the relativistic pseudopotential correlation-consistent composite approach (rp-ccCA), an efficient methodology designed to reproduce an accuracy that would be obtained using the more computationally demanding CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pCV∞Z-PP, albeit at a significantly reduced computational cost, while the low-level layer is computed using B3LYP/cc-pVTZ. The thermodynamic and kinetic feasibilities of the model reactions are reported in terms of enthalpies of reactions at 298 K (ΔH°(298)) and activation energies (ΔH-act). The results obtained from the rp-ccCA:B3LYP hybrid method are compared to the corresponding values using CCSD(T) and several density functionals including B3LYP, M06, M06 L, B2PLYP, mPWPLYP and B2GP-PLYP. The energetics of the oxidative addition of CC bond in ethane to Ni, Cu, Pd and Pt atoms are also reported to demonstrate that the rp-ccCA method effectively reproduces the accuracy of the CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pCV∞Z method. Our results show that in the catalytic activation of the C(α)-C(β) bond of β-O-4, the use of platinum metal catalysts will lead to the most thermodynamically favored reaction with the lowest activation barrier.

Theoretical studies, using the multireference correlation consistent composite approach (MR-ccCA), have been carried out on the ground and lowest lying spin-forbidden excited states of a series of silicon-containing systems. The MR-ccCA method is the multireference equivalent of the successful single reference ccCA method that has been shown to produce chemically accurate (within ±1.0 kcal mol(-1) of reliable, well-established experiment) results. The percentage contributions of the SCF configurations to complete active space self-consistent field wave functions together with the Frobenius norm of the t(1) vectors and related D(1) diagnostics of the coupled-cluster single double wave function with the cc-pVTZ basis set have been utilized to illustrate the multi-configurational characteristics of the compounds considered. MR-ccCA incorporates additive terms to account for relativistic effects, atomic spin-orbit coupling, scalar relativistic effects, and core-valence correlation. MR-ccCA has been utilized to predict the atomization energies, enthalpies of formation, and the lowest energy spin-forbidden transitions for Si(n)X(m) (2 ≤ n + m ≥ 3 where n ≠ 0 and X = B, C, N, Al, P), silicon hydrides, and analogous compounds of carbon. The energetics of small silicon aluminides and phosphorides are predicted for the first time.