Microwave catalysis through rotationally hot reactive species.
In this contribution we propose a novel physical mechanism for microwave catalysis based on rotationally excited reactive species and verify its validity through a computer simulation of a realistic chemical reaction-neutral ester hydrolysis. This nonequilibrium system is formally described by introducing rotational temperature, which is higher than the translational temperature. A Born-Oppenheimer surface was constructed on the density functional theory level and applied to a modified Monte Carlo scheme. The simulation gave a reduced activation free energy when the rotational temperature was higher than the translational temperature, which constitutes a catalytic effect. For example, our calculation predicts that with rotational and translational temperatures of 310 and 300 K, respectively, the reaction should proceed 4.5 times faster than when both temperatures are 300 K. Moreover, this microwave catalytic effect is less pronounced at higher temperatures, which may have serious implications for the interaction of microwaves with living organisms in the context of widespread mobile telephony.