Quantum-chemical Modeling of Interstellar Grain Prebiotic Chemistry: Catalytic Synthesis of Glycine and Alanine on the Surface of a Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Flake

The formation pathways of amino acids, namely, glycine and alanine, on the surface of a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon flake (corone) are studied with a semiempirical, quantum-chemistry package referred to as CATIVIC. It is found that the stability of the carboxyl group (COOH) is enhanced by chemisorption that occurs in three adsorbate modes. In particular, the two-site mode enables us to make successive surface recombinations that result in chemisorbed amino-acid configurations that closely trace the surface geometry. This property imposes a strict handedness on amino acids assembled from side groups along the surface edge that, in the case of chiral surfaces, may lead to enantioselection as previously found by experiment. By comparing prospective reactions on a larger surface model (circumcoronene), evidence is found that favors amino-acid formation on the smaller flakes. Due to a lack of measurements, the main findings of the present work have been confirmed with an ab initio method.