Journal
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY LETTERS
Volume 12, Issue 43, Pages 10713-10719Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c03116
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Funding
- Vanderbilt University
- Vanderbilt Institue of Chemical Biology
- National Science Foundation [TGBIO200057]
- Vanderbilt Undergraduate Summer Research Program
- Department of Chemistry
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [21702182, 21873081]
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [2020XZZX002-02]
- State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization [ZJUCEU2020007]
- Center of Chemistry for Frontier Technologies
- Starry Night Science Fund of Zhejiang University Shanghai Institute for Advanced Study [SN-ZJUSIAS-006]
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The study found an entropy maximum in the cyclopentadiene dimerization process, leading to dynamic intermediates with elongated lifetimes, but no entropic intermediates were identified.
Fleeting intermediates constitute dynamically stepwise mechanisms. They have been characterized in molecular dynamics trajectories, but whether these intermediates form a free energy minimum to become entropic intermediates remains elusively defined. We developed a computational protocol known as entropic path sampling to evaluate the entropic variation of reacting species along a reaction path based on an ensemble of trajectories. Using cyclopentadiene dimerization as a model reaction, we observed an entropy maximum along the reaction path which originates from an enhanced conformational flexibility as the reacting species enter into a flat energy region. As the reacting species further approach product formation, unfavorable entropic restriction fails to offset the potential energy drop, resulting in no free energy minimum along the post-TS pathway. Our results show that cyclopentadiene dimerization involves an entropy maximum that leads to dynamic intermediates with elongated lifetimes, but the reaction does not involve entropic intermediates.
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