Quasiclassical Trajectory Study of the O(³P) + CO₂(¹Σ_g⁺) Reaction at Hyperthermal Energies

This paper presents the reaction mechanism, cross sections, and product energy partitioning for the O + CO₂ reaction, calculated using Born–Oppenheimer molecular dynamics simulations with the quasiclassical trajectory (BOMD–QCT) method. At collision energies up to 9.5 eV, three reactions, oxygen exchange (above ∼1.5 eV), abstraction (above ∼5.5 eV), and dissociation (above ∼7.5 eV) occur, with abstraction and dissociation involving either an insertion–elimination mechanism or a stripping mechanism. The insertion–elimination mechanism involves the formation of a planar CO₃ intermediate which lies 0.52 eV above the ground-state CO₂; the energetic barrier for oxygen abstraction via this mechanism is 3.52 eV. Interestingly, the insertion–elimination mechanism predominately contributes to the cross sections at collision energies just above the effective energetic threshold for the abstraction and dissociation reactions; at higher collision energies, the contribution from the stripping mechanism increases and eventually dominates. At a collision energy of 9.5 eV, the cross sections for oxygen exchange, abstraction, and dissociation are 4.17 a₀², 1.58 a₀², and 0.68 a₀², respectively. The lower reaction cross sections, higher effective reaction barrier, and product energy distribution of the stripping mechanism were attributed to the short lifetime (28 fs) of the OCOO species compared with that of the CO₃ species (45 fs) that arises in the insertion–elimination mechanism. For the exchange reaction, it is found that roughly 40% of the reactant translational energy ends up in CO₂ vibration, which provides a single-collision mechanism to produce highly excited CO₂. We also studied intersystem crossing effects using trajectory surface hopping calculations and find no changes compared to single surface (triplet) calculations at energies below 7.5 eV; however, at 7.5 eV and higher the abstraction cross sections are changed by as much as 20%, and the (very small) dissociation cross sections are changed by factors of four or more.