Reactive molecular dynamics simulation for isotope-exchange reactions in H/D systems: ReaxFFHD development

Mohammad Ebrahim Izadi, Ali Maghari, Weiwei Zhang, Adri C.T. van Duin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

To investigate the chemical isotope-exchange reactions within a system composed of a mixture of hydrogen and deuterium (H/D) in the plasma media, the ReaxFFHD potential was parameterized against an appropriate quantum mechanics (QM)-based training set. These QM data involve structures and energies related to bond dissociation, angle distortion, and an exchange reaction of the tri-atomic molecular ions, H3+, D3+, H2D+, and D2H+, produced in the hydrogen plasma. Using the ReaxFFHD potential, a range of reactive molecular dynamics simulations were performed on different mixtures of H/D systems. Analysis of the reactions involved in the production of these tri-atomic molecular ions was carried out over 1 ns simulations. The results show that the ReaxFFHD potential can properly model isotope-exchange reactions of tri-atomic molecular ions and that it also has a perfect transferability to reactions taking place in these systems. In our simulations, we observed some intermediate molecules (H2, D2, and HD) that undergo secondary reactions to form the tri-atomic molecular ions as the most likely products in the hydrogen plasma. Moreover, there remains a preference for D in the produced molecular ions, which is related to the lower zero-point energy of the D-enriched species, showing the isotope effects at the heart of the ReaxFFHD potential.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)224111
Number of pages1
JournalThe Journal of chemical physics
Volume152
Issue number22
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 14 2020

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Physics and Astronomy
  • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

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