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Essentials of Computational Chemistry

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15.3 TRANSITION-STATE THEORY 533<br />

Table 15.1 Logarithmically averaged percent errors in<br />

TST and VTST compared to accurate quantal rate<br />

constants for a series <strong>of</strong> 3-atom reactionsa T (K) Number <strong>of</strong> reactions LAPE (%)<br />

TST VTST<br />

200 37 1480 1952<br />

250 40 452 569<br />

300 48 283 296<br />

400 49 131 148<br />

600 37 65 51<br />

1000 34 53 24<br />

1500 26 63 18<br />

2400 8 139 21<br />

a Allison and Truhlar 1998. Logarithmically averaged percent<br />

errors treat each factor <strong>of</strong> 2, whether an overestimate or an<br />

underestimate, as a 100% error.<br />

At the highest temperatures, VTST is about five times more accurate than canonical TST, but<br />

even canonical TST is still accurate to within about a factor <strong>of</strong> 2. Note that improved performance<br />

<strong>of</strong> VTST as temperature increases is to be expected since entropic effects increasingly<br />

dominate under those conditions, and it is primarily entropy that moves the optimal dividing<br />

surface away from the potential energy saddle point. At low temperatures, TST appears to<br />

outperform VTST, but that is an artifact <strong>of</strong> not considering tunneling contributions to the<br />

rate constant (see Section 15.3.3). Tunneling effects are included in the accurate quantal<br />

rate constants; since TST usually overestimates the classical rate, it is accidentally in better<br />

agreement with the quantal rate, which is always increased over the exact classical rate by<br />

tunneling.<br />

Note that, with the minimized rate constant in hand, a generalized activation free energy<br />

can be defined as the difference between the free energy <strong>of</strong> the reactants and that for the<br />

point smin. Note also that for the computation <strong>of</strong> isotope effects, VTST proceeds exactly like<br />

conventional TST, except that there is no requirement at a given temperature that the value<br />

<strong>of</strong> s that minimizes the rate constant for the light-atom-substituted system will be the same<br />

value <strong>of</strong> s that minimizes the rate constant for the heavy-atom-substituted system. Each must<br />

be determined separately, at which point the ratio <strong>of</strong> rate constants for that temperature may<br />

be expressed.<br />

15.3.3 Quantum Effects on the Rate Constant<br />

The metaphor invoked in Section 15.2 <strong>of</strong> a reacting system as a cloud wandering through<br />

a mountain pass is, by virtue <strong>of</strong> being macroscopic, necessarily a classical metaphor. In<br />

visualizing that situation, we accept as a given that those portions <strong>of</strong> the cloud below the<br />

level <strong>of</strong> the pass (i.e., at too low an energy) fail to go through and portions above the<br />

pass always do. Like the cloud in the mountain pass, the probability <strong>of</strong> transmission from

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