https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2017-70575-2
Regular Article
A theoretical quantum chemical study of alanine formation in interstellar medium*
1 Department of Mathematics & Astronomy, University of Lucknow, 226007 Lucknow, India
2 Department of Physics, University of Lucknow, 226007 Lucknow, India
a
e-mail: alkamisra99@gmail.com
Received: 12 September 2016
Received in final form: 7 June 2017
Published online: 29 August 2017
The interstellar medium, the vast space between the stars, is a rich reservoir of molecular material ranging from simple diatomic molecules to more complex, astrobiologically important molecules such as amino acids, nucleobases, and other organic species. Radical-radical and radical-neutral interaction schemes are very important for the formation of comparatively complex molecules in low temperature chemistry. An attempt has been made to explore the possibility of formation of complex organic molecules in interstellar medium, through detected interstellar molecules like CH3CN and HCOOH. The gas phase reactions are theoretically studied using quantum chemical techniques. We used the density functional theory (DFT) at the B3LYP/6-311G(d,p) level. The reaction energies, potential barrier and optimized structures of all the geometries, involved in the reaction path, has been discussed. We report the potential energy surfaces for the reactions considered in this work.
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2017
