Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and related species have been suggested to play a key role in the astrochemical evolution of the interstellar medium, but the formation mechanism of even their simplest building block—the aromatic benzene molecule—has remained elusive for decades. Here we demonstrate in crossed molecular beam experiments combined with electronic structure and statistical calculations that benzene (C 6 H 6 ) can be synthesized via the barrierless, exoergic reaction of the ethynyl radical and 1,3-butadiene, C 2 H + H 2 CCHCHCH 2  → C 6 H 6  + H, under single collision conditions. This reaction portrays the simplest representative of a reaction class in which aromatic molecules with a benzene core can be formed from acyclic precursors via barrierless reactions of ethynyl radicals with substituted 1,3-butadiene molecules. Unique gas-grain astrochemical models imply that this low-temperature route controls the synthesis of the very first aromatic ring from acyclic precursors in cold molecular clouds, such as in the Taurus Molecular Cloud. Rapid, subsequent barrierless reactions of benzene with ethynyl radicals can lead to naphthalene-like structures thus effectively propagating the ethynyl-radical mediated formation of aromatic molecules in the interstellar medium.

Ketohydroperoxides are important in liquid-phase autoxidation and in gas-phase partial oxidation and pre-ignition chemistry, but because of their low concentration, instability, and various analytical chemistry limitations, it has been challenging to experimentally determine their reactivity, and only a few pathways are known. In the present work, 75 elementary-step unimolecular reactions of the simplest γ-ketohydroperoxide, 3-hydroperoxypropanal, were discovered by a combination of density functional theory with several automated transition-state search algorithms: the Berny algorithm coupled with the freezing string method, single- and double-ended growing string methods, the heuristic KinBot algorithm, and the single-component artificial force induced reaction method (SC-AFIR). The present joint approach significantly outperforms previous manual and automated transition-state searches - 68 of the reactions of γ-ketohydroperoxide discovered here were previously unknown and completely unexpected. All of the methods found the lowest-energy transition state, which corresponds to the first step of the Korcek mechanism, but each algorithm except for SC-AFIR detected several reactions not found by any of the other methods. We show that the low-barrier chemical reactions involve promising new chemistry that may be relevant in atmospheric and combustion systems. Our study highlights the complexity of chemical space exploration and the advantage of combined application of several approaches. Overall, the present work demonstrates both the power and the weaknesses of existing fully automated approaches for reaction discovery which suggest possible directions for further method development and assessment in order to enable reliable discovery of all important reactions of any specified reactant(s).

Automatic kinetic mechanism generation, virtual high‐throughput screening, and automatic transition state search are currently trending applications requiring exploration of a large molecule space. Large‐scale search requires fast and accurate estimation of molecules' properties of interest, such as thermochemistry. Existing approaches are not satisfactory for large polycyclic molecules: considering the number of molecules being screened, quantum chemistry (even cheap density functional theory methods) can be computationally expensive, and group additivity, though fast, is not sufficiently accurate. This paper provides a fast and moderately accurate alternative by proposing a polycyclic thermochemistry estimation method that extends the group additivity method with two additional algorithms: similarity match and bicyclic decomposition. It significantly reduces Hf(298 K) estimation error from over 60 kcal/mol (group additivity method) to around 5 kcal/mol, Cp(298 K) error from 9 to 1 cal/mol/K, and S(298 K) error from 70 to 7 cal/mol/K. This method also works well for heteroatomic polycyclics. A web application for estimating thermochemistry by this method is made available at http://rmg.mit.edu/molecule_search.

Ab initio CCSD(T)/cc-pVTZ//B3LYP/6-311G** calculations of the C(5)H(5) potential energy surface have been performed to investigate the reaction mechanism of ethynyl radical (C(2)H) with C(3)H(4) isomers, allene and methylacetylene. They were followed by RRKM calculations of reaction rate constants and product branching ratios under single-collision conditions. The results show that the C(2)H + CH(2)CCH(2) reaction in a case of statistical behavior is expected to produce 1,4-pentadiyne (56-63%), ethynylallene (22-24%), and pentatetraene (10-15%), with the most favorable pathways including H losses from the initial HCCCH(2)CCH(2) adduct leading to either 1,4-pentadiyne or ethynylallene, and a multistep route HCCC(CH(2))(2) --> four-member ring --> CH(2)CCCHCH(2) --> CH(2)CCCCH(2) + H featuring a formal insertion of C(2)H into a double bond of allene followed by H elimination giving rise to pentatetraene. On the contrary, the C(2)H + CH(3)CCH reaction produces diacetylene + methyl (21-61%) by CH(3) loss from the HCCC(CH)CH(3) initial adduct as well as methyldiacetylene + H (27-56%) and ethynylallene + H (11-22%) by H eliminations from CHCCHCCH(3). The calculated product branching ratios are in general agreement with the available experimental data, although some quantitative deviations from experiment and possible reasons for them are also discussed. The present calculations confirm that the C(2)H + C(3)H(4) reactions proceed without entrance barriers and lead, via intermediates and transition states residing lower in energy than the initial reactants, to the C(5)H(4) + H and C(4)H(2) + CH(3) products exothermic by 20-36 kcal mol(-1), with strong dependence of the product distribution on the reacting C(3)H(4) isomer, making these reactions fast under low-temperature conditions of Titan's atmosphere where they can serve as a source of more complex unsaturated hydrocarbons.

The C9H11 potential energy surface (PES) was experimentally and theoretically explored because it is a relatively simple, prototypical alkylaromatic radical system. Although the C9H11 PES has already been extensively studied both experimentally (under single-collision and thermal conditions) and theoretically, new insights were made in this work by taking a new experimental approach: flash photolysis combined with time-resolved molecular beam mass spectrometry (MBMS) and visible laser absorbance. The C9H11 PES was experimentally accessed by photolytic generation of the phenyl radical and subsequent reaction with excess propene (C6H5 + C3H6). The overall kinetics of C6H5 + C3H6 was measured using laser absorbance with high time-resolution from 300 to 700 K and was found to be in agreement with earlier measurements over a lower temperature range. Five major product channels of C6H5 + C3H6 were observed with MBMS at 600 and 700 K, four of which were expected: hydrogen (H)-abstraction (measured by the stable benzene, C6H6, product), methyl radical (CH3)-loss (styrene detected), H-loss (phenylpropene isomers detected) and radical adduct stabilization. The fifth, unexpected product observed was the benzyl radical, which was rationalized by the inclusion of a previously unreported pathway on the C9H11 PES: aromatic-catalysed 1,2-H-migration and subsequent resonance stabilized radical (RSR, benzyl radical in this case) formation. The current theoretical understanding of the C9H11 PES was supported (including the aromatic-catalyzed pathway) by quantitative comparisons between modelled and experimental MBMS results. At 700 K, the branching to styrene + CH3 was 2-4 times greater than that of any other product channel, while benzyl radical + C2H4 from the aromatic-catalyzed pathway accounted for ∼10% of the branching. Single-collision conditions were also simulated on the updated PES to explain why previous crossed molecular beam experiments did not see evidence of the aromatic-catalyzed pathway. This experimentally validated knowledge of the C9H11 PES was added to the database of the open-source Reaction Mechanism Generator (RMG), which was then used to generalize the findings on the C9H11 PES to a slightly more complicated alkylaromatic system.