PNNL

Abstract

Previous experiments [Baer, et al. J. Phys. Chem. A 116, 2833 (2012)] have studied the dissociation of 1,2-diiodoethane radical cation (C2H4I2+•) and found a one-dimensional distribution of translational energy; an odd finding considering most product relative translational energy distributions are two-dimensional. The goal of this study is to obtain an accurate understanding of the potential energy surface (PES) topology for the unimolecular decomposition reaction C2H4I2+• - C2H4I+ + I•. This is done through comparison of many single-reference electronic structure methods, coupled-cluster single point (energy) calculations, and multi-reference calculations used to quantify spin-orbit (SO) coupling effects. We find that the structure of the C2H4I2+• reactant has a substantial effect on the role of SO coupling on the reaction energy. Both the BHandH and MP2 theories with an ECP/6-31++G** basis set, and without SO coupling corrections, provide accurate models for the reaction energetics. MP2 theory gives an unsymmetric structure with different C-I bond lengths, resulting in a SO energy for C2H4I2+• similar to that for the product I-atom and a negligible SO correction to the reaction energy. In contrast, DFT gives a symmetric structure for C2H4I2+•, similar to that of the neutral C2H4I2 parent, resulting in a substantial SO correction and increasing the reaction energy by 6.0-6.5 kcal/mol. Also, we find that for this system single point energy calculations are inaccurate, since a small change in geometry can lead to a large change in energy.