Chemical reactivity energy function

MM method is the fastest method available (least expensive), and hence is an ideal choice for studies on structural parameters and the most stable conformation molecules. Optimization steps are often carried out to confirm that the molecules are in their lowest energy state, so that calculated results can be compared with those made experimentally. However, since MM does not deal directly with electrons and orbitals, it cannot be used to study e.g. chemical reactivity of functional monomers. 

In chapter 2, Profs. Contreras, Perez and Aizman present the density functional (DF) theory in the framework of the reaction field (RF) approach to solvent effects. In spite of the fact that the electrostatic potentials for cations and anions display quite a different functional dependence with the radial variable, they show that it is possible in both cases to build up an unified procedure consistent with the Bom model of ion solvation. The proposed procedure avoids the introduction of arbitrary ionic radii in the calculation of insertion energy. Especially interesting is the introduction of local indices in the solvation energy expression, the effect of the polarizable medium is directly expressed in terms of the natural reactivity indices of DF theory. The paper provides the theoretical basis for the treatment of chemical reactivity in solution. 

In the last three decades, density functional theory (DFT) has been extensively used to generate what may be considered as a general approach to the description of chemical reactivity [1-5]. The concepts that emerge from this theory are response functions expressed basically in terms of derivatives of the total energy and of the electronic density with respect to the number of electrons and to the external potential. As such, they correspond to conceptually simple, but at the same time, chemically meaningful quantities. 

Also, it is interesting to note that in the smooth quadratic interpolation, the curve of the total energy as a function of the number of electrons shows a minimum for some value of N beyond N0 (see Figure 2.1). This point has been associated by Parr et al. [49] with the electrophilicity index that measures the energy change of an electrophile when it becomes saturated with electrons. Together with this global quantity, the philicity concept of Chattaraj et al. [50,51] has been extensively used to study a wide variety of different chemical reactivity problems. 

The SP-DFT has been shown to be useful in the better understanding of chemical reactivity, however there is still work to be done. The usefulness of the reactivity indexes in the p-, p representation has not been received much attention but it is worth to explore them in more detail. Along this line, the new experiments where it is able to separate spin-up and spin-down electrons may be an open field in the applications of the theory with this variable set. Another issue to develop in this context is to define response functions of the system associated to first and second derivatives of the energy functional defined by Equation 10.1. But the challenge in this case would be to find the physical meaning of such quantities rather than build the mathematical framework because this is due to the linear dependence on the four-current and external potential. 

The utility of the Fukui function for predicting chemical reactivity can also be described using the variational principle for the Fukui function [61,62], The Fukui function from the above discussion, /v (r), represents the best way to add an infinitesimal fraction of an electron to a system in the sense that the electron density pv/v(r) I has lower energy than any other N I -electron density... 

Fig. 3.1.3 Energy along the reaction coordinate for the reaction D + H — H —> D — H + H (and its isotopic variants), as a function of the approach angle. Note that the lowest barrier is found for the collinear approach. [Adapted from R.D. Levine and R.B. Bernstein, Molecular reaction dynamics and chemical reactivity (Oxford University Press, 1987).]...

As in the MD method, PES for KMC can be derived from first-principles methods or using empirical energy functionals described above. However, the KMC method requires the accurate evaluation of the PES not only near the local minima, but also for transition regions between them. The corresponding empirical potentials are called reactive, since they can be used to calculate parameters of chemical reactions. The development of reactive potentials is quite a difficult problem, since chemical reactions usually include the breaking or formation of new bonds and a reconfiguration of the electronic structure. At present, a few types of reactive empirical potentials can semi-quantitatively reproduce the results of first-principles calculations these are EAM and MEAM potentials for metals and bond-order potentials (Tersoff and Brenner) for covalent semiconductors and organics. 

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