We have performed the first ab initio study that considers all possible oligomerization reactions available to silicic acid in basic solution (ignoring high-energy multiply charged species), up to and including tetramers. Energies have been computed at the MP2/6-31+G(d)//HF/6-31+G(d) level of theory, with a hybrid solvation model which includes explicit waters and CPCM continuum corrections to account for solvent effects. The explicit waters have been found to be extremely important in providing additional stabilization of intermediates and transition states which are not accounted for properly by more conventional implicit solvent approaches, suggesting some of the known pathways are more facile than previously predicted. Additionally, a number of previously neglected bimolecular growth pathways such as dimer/dimer and monomer/cyclic trimer additions, and unimolecular cyclization steps such as branched 3-ring formation from branching tetramers and the formation of highly condensed bicyclic and tetrahedral clusters have been studied in detail. Many are found to be very energetically feasible and consequently could have considerable impacts on the initial stages of silica nucleation.

The first steps in a pH- and temperature-dependent theoretical kinetic model of silicate polymerization and dissolution are examined in this work with a combined ab initio and transition state theory based study of the dimerization of H(4)SiO(4). The role of solvation has been of primary concern in this work, and its influence on theoretical activation energies and pre-exponential factors has been thoroughly benchmarked. Relatively inexpensive MP2/6-31+G(d)//HF/6-31+G(d) calculations of octahydrate clusters, with conductor-like polarizable continuum model corrections obtained in the MP2-level single-point calculations, have been shown to lead to a good description of the limited experimentally determined energetics of dimerization for most elementary reactions. Pre-exponential factors computed from this level of theory are found to be relatively insensitive to the level of theory utilized for geometry optimizations, the number of explicit waters, hindered rotor corrections, and variational effects arising from the minimization of rate constants. Within this framework, a kinetic model of the chemistry of H(4)SiO(4) and H(3)SiO(4)(-), forming H(6)Si(2)O(7) and H(5)Si(2)O(7)(-), has been compiled. Numerical simulations over pH = 3-12 show that a number of pH- and temperature dependent trends in reaction rates and positions of equilibrium are well described with this simple dimerization model. More specifically to the dimerization process, we obtain dimerization constants, log K(dim), of 1.85 and -7.15 for the formation of H(6)Si(2)O(7) and H(5)Si(2)O(7)(-) respectively, which compare well with experimentally determined values of 1.2 and -8.5, respectively.

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Analogues of important aromatic growth mechanisms in hydrocarbon pyrolysis and combustion systems are extended to chlorinated systems. We consider the addition of C2Cl2 to both C4Cl3 and C4Cl5 radicals at the M06-2X/6-311+G(3df,3p)//B3LYP/6-31G(d) level of theory, and we demonstrate that these reaction systems have much in common with those of nonchlorinated species. In particular, we find that these radicals appear to lead preferentially to fulvenes, and not to the observed aromatic products, as is found in nonchlorinated systems. We have therefore also considered nonradical C4/C2 channels by way of Diels-Alder cyclization of C4Cl4/C2Cl2 and C4H2Cl2/C2HCl pairs to describe aromatic formation. While the latter pair readily leads to the formation of partially chlorinated benzenes, the fully chlorinated congeners are sterically prohibited from ring closing directly; this leads to a series of novel rearrangement processes which predict the formation of hexachloro-1,5-diene-3-yne, in addition to hexachlorobenzene, in good agreement with experiment. This suggests, for the first time, that facile nonradical routes to aromatic formation are operative in partially and fully chlorinated pyrolysis and combustion systems.

The mechanism of formation of benzene rings during the pyrolysis of dichloro- and trichloroethylenes has been investigated by the method of laser powered homogeneous pyrolysis coupled with product analysis by gas chromatography. Additionally, selected (co)pyrolyses between the chlorinated ethylenes, CH2Cl2, C4Cl4, C4Cl6, and C2H2 have been performed to explicitly probe the roles of 2C3 and C4/C2 reaction pairs in aromatic growth. The presence of odd-carbon products in neat C4Cl6 pyrolyses indicates that 2C3 processes are operative in these systems; however, comparison with product yields from C2HCl3 suggests that C4/C2 processes dominate most other systems. This is further evidenced by an absence of C3 and other odd-carbon species in (co)pyrolyses with dichloromethane which should seed C3-based growth. The reactions of perchlorinated C4 species C4Cl5, C4Cl3, and C4Cl4 with C2Cl2 were subsequently explored through extensive kinetic simulations of the possible reaction pathways based on previous kinetic models and the exhaustive quantum chemical investigations of our preceding work. The experimental and theoretical results strongly suggest that, at moderate temperatures, aromatic ring formation from chlorinated ethylenes normally follows a Diels-Alder coupling of C4 and C2 molecular units followed by internal shifts; the one exception is the C4Cl4 + C2Cl2 system, where steric factors lead to the formation of nonaromatic products. There is little evidence for radical-based routes in these systems.