Quantum chemical study of the reaction paths and kinetics of acetaldehyde formation on a methanol–water ice model

Acetaldehyde (CH₃CHO) is ubiquitous in interstellar space and is important for astrochemistry as it can contribute to the formation of amino acids through reaction with nitrogen containing chemical species. Quantum chemical and reaction kinetics studies are reported for acetaldehyde formation from the chemical reaction of C(³P) with a methanol molecule adsorbed at the eighth position of a cubic water cluster. We present extensive quantum chemical calculations for total spin S = 1 and S = 0. The UωB97XD/6-311++G(2d,p) model chemistry is employed to optimize the structures, compute minimum energy paths and zero-point vibrational energies of all reaction steps. For the optimized structures, the calculated energies are refined by CCSD(T) single point computations. We identify four transition states on the triplet potential energy surface (PES), and one on the singlet PES. The reaction mechanism involves the intermediate formation of CH₃OCH adsorbed on the ice cluster. The rate limiting step for forming acetaldehyde is the C–O bond breaking in CH₃OCH to form adsorbed CH₃ and HCO. We find two positions on the reaction path where spin crossing may be possible such that acetaldehyde can form in its singlet spin state. Using variational transition-state theory with multidimensional tunnelling we provide thermal rate constants for the energetically rate limiting step for both spin states and discuss two routes to acetaldehyde formation. As expected, quantum effects are important at low temperatures.

Acetaldehyde (CH₃CHO) is ubiquitous in interstellar space and is important for astrochemistry as it can contribute to the formation of amino acids. The reaction mechanism for its formation on a methanol ice grain may involve intersystem spin crossing.