SCF-CI studies of the equilibrium structure and the proton transfer barrier H₃O ⁻₂

Abstract

Large-scale configuration interaction (CI) calculations have been performed in order to study the effect of the correlation energy on the equilibrium geometrical structure, the stability, and on the energy barrier of the proton transfer reaction in the hydrogen bonded system HO⁻ · HOH. An extended Gaussian basis set including polarization functions on each nuclear centre has been employed to approximate the molecular Orbitals. All possible single and double replacements resulting from a single determinant Hartree-Fock reference state have been taken into account in the CI wavefunction. Compared to the SCF results the equilibrium oxygen/oxygen distance has been obtained from the CI calculations to be smaller by about 0.08 Å and the correlation energy has been found to stabilize the composed system by 3.6 kcal/mole. An almost symmetric equilibrium structure with the hydrogen bonding H-atom midway between the two oxygen centres has been obtained in the CI treatment, whereas SCF calculations yield an asymmetric geometrical configuration with a small energy barrier of 1.4 kcal/mole for the proton transfer process.