Last week we posted some insights on finding Transitions States in Gaussian 09 in order to evaluate a given reaction mechanism. A stepwise methodology is tried to achieve and this time we’ll wrap the post with two flow charts trying to synthesize the information given. It must be stressed that knowledge about the chemistry of the reaction is of paramount importance since G09 cannot guess the structure connecting two minima on its own but rather needs our help from our chemical intuition. So, without further ado here is the remainder of Guillermo’s post.

 

METHOD 3. QST3. For this method, you provide the coordinates of your reagents, products and TS (in that order) and G09 uses the QST3 method to find the first order saddle point. As for QST2 the numbering scheme must match for all the atoms in your three sets of coordinates, again, use the connection editor to verify it. Here is an example of the input file.

link 0
--blank line--
#p b3lyp/6-31G(d,p) opt=(qst3,calcfc) geom=connectivity freq=noraman
--blank line--
Charge Multiplicity
Coordinates of reagents
--blank line—
Charge Multiplicity
Coordinates of products
--blank line--
Charge Multiplicity
Coordinates of TS
--blank line---

As I previously mentioned, it happens that you find a first order saddle point but does not correspond to the TS you want, you find an imaginary vibration that is not the one for the bond you are forming or breaking. For these cases, I suggest you to take that TS structure and manually modify the region that is causing you trouble, then use method 2.

METHOD 4. When the previous methods fail to yield your desired TS, the brute force way is to acquire the potential energy surface (PES) and visually locate your possible TS. The task is to perform a rigid PES scan, for this, the molecular structure must be defined using z-matrix. Here is an example of the input file.

link 0
--blank line--
#p b3lyp/6-31G(d,p) scan test geom=connectivity
--blank line--
Charge Multiplicity
Z-matrix of reagents (or products)
--blank line--

In the Z-matrix section you must specify which variables (B, A or D) you want to modify. First, locate the variables you want to modify (distance B, angle A, or dihedral angle D). Then modify those lines within the Z-matrix, here is an example.

B1       1.41     3          0.05
A1       104.5   2          1.0

What you are specifying with this is that the variable B1 (a distance) is going to be stepped 3 times by 0.05. Then variable A1 (an angle) is going to be stepped 2 times by 1.0. Thus, a total of 12 energy evaluations will be performed. At the end of the calculation open the .log file in gaussview and in Results choose the Scan… option. This will open a 3D surface where you should locate the saddle point, this is an educated guess, so take the structure you think corresponds to your TS and use it for method 2.

I have not fully explored this method so I encourage you to go to Gaussian.com and thoroughly review it.

Once you have found your TS structure and via the imaginary vibration confirmed that is the one you are looking for the next step is to verify that your TS connects both your reagents and products in the potential energy surface. For this, an Intrinsic Reaction Coordinate (IRC) calculation must be performed. Here is an example of the input file for the IRC.

link 0
--blank line--
#p b3lyp/6-31G(d,p) irc=calcfc geom=connectivity
--blank line--
Charge Multiplicity
Coordinates of TS
--blank line--

With this input, you ask for an IRC calculation, the default numbers of steps are 20 for each side of your TS in the PES; you must specify the coordinates of your TS or take them from the .chk file of your optimization. In addition, an initial force constant calculation must be made. It often occurs that the calculation fails in the correction step, thus, for complicated cases I hardly suggest to use irc=calcall, this will consume very long time (even days) but there is a 95% guaranty. If the number of points is insufficient you can put more within the route section, here is such an example for a complicated case.

link 0
--blank line--
#p b3lyp/6-31G(d,p) irc=(calcall,maxpoints=80) geom=connectivity
--blank line--
Charge Multiplicity
Coordinates of TS
--blank line--

With this route section, you are asking to perform an IRC calculation with 80 points on each side of the PES, calculating the force constants at every point. For an even complicated case try adding the scf=qc keyword in the route section, quadratic convergence often works better for IRC calculations.

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