The lowest energy structures of peroxynitric acid have been studied with B3LYP/6-311＋ G（2d,2p） method. The potential energy surfaces （PES） along the O-N and O-O bonds have been scanned at CCSD（T）/aug-cc-pVDZ level, respectively. The calculated results show that on the O-N PES, the O3-N4 bond length of the loose transition state is 2.82A^° and the corresponding energy barrier is 25.6 kcal/mol, while on the O-O PES, the loose transition state with of O2-O3 bond length of 2.35A^° has the energy barrier of 37.4 kcal/mol. Thus the primary reaction path for peroxynitric acid is the dissociation into HO2 and NO2.
