No stationary points that represent free protons (H + ), hydronium ion (H3O + ) or dihydroxonium ions (H5O2 + ) were found in the pure water system. While this does not demonstrate nonexistence of these local minima, it suggests that if these positively charged aqueous species ever do exist, they may be occurring in very shallow PES wells where configurations can easily evolve to more energetically favorable species such as OSAZ, or the system size constrains the separation of H + and H3SiO4 -preventing the optimization to a stable configuration where they are far apart. In the system size under consideration, it suggests that the pure water case is less conducive to their formation.