Double-Roaming Dynamics in the H + C2H2 → H2 + C2H Reaction: Acetylene-Facilitated Roaming and Vinylidene-Facilitated Roaming

J Phys Chem Lett. 2021 May 6;12(17):4211-4217. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01045. Epub 2021 Apr 26.

Abstract

We report two novel roaming pathways for the H + C2H2 → H2 + C2H reaction by performing extensive quasiclassical trajectory calculations on a new, global, high-level machine learning-based potential energy surface. One corresponds to the acetylene-facilitated roaming pathway, where the H atom turns back from the acetylene + H channel and abstracts another H atom from acetylene. The other is the vinylidene-facilitated roaming, where the H atom turns back from the vinylidene + H channel and abstracts another H from vinylidene. The "double-roaming" pathways account for roughly 95% of the total cross section of the H2 + C2H products at the collision energy of 70 kcal/mol. These computational results give valuable insights into the significance of the two isomers (acetylene and vinylidene) in chemical reaction dynamics and also the experimental search for roaming dynamics in this bimolecular reaction.