Investigating the significance of zero-point motion in small molecular clusters of sulphuric acid and water
The nucleation of particles from trace gases in the atmosphere is an important source of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), and these are vital for the formation of clouds in view of the high supersaturations required for homogeneous water droplet nucleation. The methods of quantum chemistry have increasingly been employed to model nucleation due to their high accuracy and efficiency in calculating configurational energies; and nucleation rates can be obtained from the associated free energies of particle formation. However, even in such advanced approaches, it is typically assumed that the nuclei have a classical nature, which is questionable for some systems. The importance of zero-point motion (also known as quantum nuclear dynamics) in modelling small clusters of sulphuric acid and water is tested here using the path integral molecular dynamics (PIMD) method at the density functional theory (DFT) level of theory. We observe a small zero-point effect on the the equilibrium structures of certain clusters. One configuration is found to display a bimodal behaviour at 300 K in contrast to the stable ionised state suggested from a zero temperature classical geometry optimisation. The general effect of zero-point motion is to promote the extent of proton transfer with respect to classical behaviour. We thank Prof. Angelos Michaelides and his group in University College London (UCL) for practical advice and helpful discussions. This work benefited from interactions with the Thomas Young Centre through seminar and discussions involving the PIMD method. SMK was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences. JLS and IJF were supported by the IMPACT scheme at UCL and by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences. We are grateful for use of the UCL Legion High Performance Computing Facility and the resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science of the under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 1130231
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-98643; KC0301020
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Chemical Physics, 140(2):024306, Journal Name: Journal of Chemical Physics, 140(2):024306
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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