Characterizing Reaction Types through Linear Free-Energy Relationships in Cavities

Abstract

Polaritonic chemistry holds the promise of controlling chemical reactivity through confined light-matter interactions, yet how reactions respond inside optical cavities remains debated. Here, we take a more zoomed-out view, inspired by electrostatic catalysis. We extend nonempirical linear free-energy relationships to cavity-modified reactions and show that their behavior falls into four distinct reaction types set by simple response-crossing rules. Reactions can follow conventional Bell-Evans-Polanyi (BEP) or counterintuitive Opposite-BEP behavior regardless of cavity tuning, or switch between the two as the cavity frequency is varied. We establish this picture analytically and demonstrate it in the Shin Metiu model and in four molecular reactions treated with ab initio electronic-structure methods. Even at this deliberately coarse-grained level, cavity-modified reactivity already shows qualitatively different and strongly counterintuitive behavior, including reactions that switch character with cavity frequency. Yet this complexity can still be reduced to a simple competition between permanent-dipole and polarizability responses. This reaction-type classification therefore provides a new route to organize and anticipate cavity-modified reactivity.