Energetics of cyclohexane isomers: a density-functional study

The binding energies and the geometric structures of conformational isomers of cyclohexane (C6H12) are determined from the density-functional theory combined with ultrasoft pseudopotentials and gradient-corrected nonlocal exchange-correlation functionals. The ground-state chair conformation is found to have a binding energy of 99.457 eV, and the metastable twist-boat conformation has 99.161 eV. The chair conformation converts to another conformation via a half-chair conformation with an energy barrier of 0.507 eV whereas the twist-boat conformation converts to another twist-boat conformation via a boat conformation with a much smaller energy barrier of 0.015 eV