Development of the ReaxFF reactive force field for describing transition metal catalyzed reactions, with application to the initial stages of the catalytic formation of carbon nanotubes.

With the aim of developing a computationally inexpensive method for modeling the high-temperature reaction dynamics of transition metal catalyzed reactions we have developed a ReaxFF reactive force field in which the parameters are fitted to a substantial quantum mechanics (QM) training set, containing full reaction pathways for relevant reactions. In this paper we apply this approach to reactions involving carbon materials plus Co, Ni, and Cu atoms. We find that ReaxFF reproduces the QM reaction data with good accuracy while also reproducing the binding characteristics of Co, Ni, and Cu atoms to hydrocarbon fragments.