Journal of Computational Chemistry

doi: 10.1002/jcc.23302pmid: N/A

Program PHI is a new and powerful program created by Nicholas Chilton, Russell Anderson, Lincoln Turner, Alessandro Soncini, and Keith Murray from Monash and Melbourne Universities, Australia on page 1164. The program is used to fit and analyze magnetic susceptibility and magnetization data for wide ranges of d‐ and f‐block molecular magnetic materials. The image shows typical plots together with contour maps that form part of the fitting routine.

doi: 10.1002/jcc.23301pmid: N/A

The cover portrays the application of the metropolis Monte‐Carlo method used by E. Iype, M. Hütter, A. P. J. Jansen, S. V. Nedea, and C. C. M. Rindt on page 1143 to scale‐up DFT results to generate an MD reactive force field (ReaxFF). The tedious optimization problem of finding the global minimum in a high dimensional parameter space, often encountered in force field optimization problems, can be solved efficiently by this approach. The stochastic nature of the algorithm enables one to determine the optimum values for the parameters even when one does not have a good starting point.

Coe, Jeremy P.; Taylor, Daniel J.; Paterson, Martin J.

doi: 10.1002/jcc.23211pmid: 23335248

The method of Monte Carlo configuration interaction (MCCI) (Greer, J. Chem. Phys. 1995a, 103, 1821; Tong, Nolan, Cheng, and Greer, Comp. Phys. Comm. 2000, 142, 132) is applied to the calculation of multipole moments. We look at the ground and excited state dipole moments in carbon monoxide. We then consider the dipole of NO, the quadrupole of N2 and of BH. An octupole of methane is also calculated. We consider experimental geometries and also stretched bonds. We show that these nonvariational quantities may be found to relatively good accuracy when compared with full configuration interaction results, yet using only a small fraction of the full configuration interaction space. MCCI results in the aug‐cc‐pVDZ basis are seen to generally have reasonably good agreement with experiment. We also investigate the performance of MCCI when applied to ionisation energies and electron affinities of atoms in an aug‐cc‐pVQZ basis. We compare the MCCI results with full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (Booth and Alavi, J. Chem. Phys. 2010, 132, 174104; Cleland, Booth, and Alavi, J. Chem. Phys. 2011, 134, 024112) and “exact” nonrelativistic results (Booth and Alavi, J. Chem. Phys. 2010, 132, 174104; Cleland, Booth, and Alavi, J. Chem. Phys. 2011, 134, 024112). We show that MCCI could be a useful alternative for the calculation of atomic ionisation energies however electron affinities appear much more challenging for MCCI. Due to the small magnitude of the electron affinities their percentage errors can be high, but with regards to absolute errors MCCI performs similarly for ionisation energies and electron affinities. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Sviatenko, Liudmyla K.; Gorb, Leonid; Hill, Frances C.; Leszczynski, Jerzy

doi: 10.1002/jcc.23228pmid: 23335274

A number of density functionals was utilized to predict gas‐phase adiabatic ionization potentials (IPs) for nitrogen‐rich heterocyclic compounds. Various solvation models were applied to the calculation of difference in free energies of solvation of oxidized and reduced forms of heterocyclic compounds in acetonitrile (AN) for correct reproduction of their standard oxidation potentials. We developed generally applicable protocols that could successfully predict the gas‐phase adiabatic ionization potentials of nitrogen‐rich heterocyclic compounds and their standard oxidation potentials in AN. This approach is supported by a MPW1K/6‐31+G(d) level of theory which uses SMD(UA0) approximation for estimation of solvation energy of neutral molecules and PCM(UA0) model for ionized ones. The mean absolute derivation (MAD) and root mean square error (RMSE) of the current theoretical models for IP are equal to 0.22 V and 0.26, respectively, and for oxidation potentials MAD = 0.13 V and RMSE = 0.17. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Yang, Rui; Rendell, Alistair P.

doi: 10.1002/jcc.23236pmid: 23386403

The use of gallium for cleaning hydrogen‐contaminated Al2O3 surfaces is explored by performing first principles density functional calculations of gallium adsorption on a hydrogen‐contaminated Al‐terminated α‐Al2O3(0001) surface. Both physisorbed and chemisorbed H‐contaminated α‐Al2O3(0001) surfaces with one monolayer (ML) gallium coverage are investigated. The thermodynamics of gallium cleaning are considered for a variety of different asymptotic products, and are found to be favorable in all cases. Physisorbed H atoms have very weak interactions with the Al2O3 surface and can be removed easily by the Ga ML. Chemisorbed H atoms form stronger interactions with the surface Al atoms. Bonding energy analysis and departure simulations indicate, however, that chemisorbed H atoms can be effectively removed by the Ga ML. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Masella, Michel; Borgis, Daniel; Cuniasse, Philippe

doi: 10.1002/jcc.23237pmid: 23382002

A multiscale coarse‐grained approach able to handle efficiently the solvation of microscopic solutes in extended chemical environment is described. That approach is able to compute readily and efficiently very long‐range solute/solvent electrostatic microscopic interactions, up to the 1‐μm scale, by considering a reduced amount of computational resources. All the required parameters are assigned to reproduce available data concerning the solvation of single ions. Such a strategy makes it possible to reproduce with good accuracy the solvation properties concerning simple ion pairs in solution (in particular, the asymptotic behavior of the ion pair potentials of mean force). This new method represents an extension of the polarizable pseudoparticle solvent model, which has been recently improved to account for the main features of hydrophobic effects in liquid water (Masella et al., J. Comput. Chem. 2011, 32, 2664). This multiscale approach is well suited to be used for computing the impact of charge changes in free energy computations, in terms of both accuracy and efficiency. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Hage, Krystel El; Piquemal, Jean‐Philip; Hobaika, Zeina; Maroun, Richard G.; Gresh, Nohad

doi: 10.1002/jcc.23242pmid: 23386428

Halogenated compounds are gaining an increasing importance in medicinal chemistry and materials science. Ab initio quantum chemistry (QC) has unraveled the existence of a “sigma hole” along the CX (X = F, Cl, Br, I) bond, namely, a depletion of electronic density prolonging the bond, concomitant with a build‐up on its sides, both of which are enhanced along the F < Cl < Br < I series. We have evaluated whether these features were intrinsically built‐in in an anisotropic, polarizable molecular mechanics (APMM) procedure such as SIBFA (sum of interactions between fragments ab initio computed). For that purpose, we have computed the interaction energies of fluoro‐, chloro‐, and bromobenzene with two probes: a divalent cation, Mg(II), and water approaching X through either one H or its O atom. This was done by parallel QC energy‐decomposition analyses (EDA) and SIBFA computations. With both probes, the leading QC contribution responsible for the existence of the sigma hole is the Coulomb contribution Ec. For all three halogenated compounds, and with both probes, the in‐ and out‐of‐plane angular features of Ec were closely mirrored by the SIBFA electrostatic multipolar contribution (EMTP). Resorting to such a contribution thus dispenses with empirically‐fitted “extra”, off‐centered partial atomic charges as in classical molecular mechanics/dynamics. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Yao, Xue X.; Ji, Chang G.; Xie, Dai Q.; Zhang, John Z.H.

doi: 10.1002/jcc.23244pmid: 23386461

The DNA binding domain of transposon Tn916 integrase (INT‐DBD) binds to DNA target site by positioning the face of a three‐stranded antiparallel β‐sheet within the major groove. As the negatively charged DNA directly interacts with the positively charged residues (such as Arg and Lys) of INT‐DBD, the electrostatic interaction is expected to play an important role in the dynamical stability of the protein–DNA binding complex. In the current work, the combined use of quantum‐based polarized protein‐specific charge (PPC) for protein and polarized nucleic acid‐specific charge (PNC) for DNA were employed in molecular dynamics simulation to study the interaction dynamics between INT‐DBD and DNA. Our study shows that the protein–DNA structure is stabilized by polarization and the calculated protein–DNA binding free energy is in good agreement with the experimental data. Furthermore, our study revealed a positive correlation between the measured binding energy difference in alanine mutation and the occupancy of the corresponding residue's hydrogen bond. This correlation relation directly relates the contribution of a specific residue to protein–DNA binding energy to the strength of the hydrogen bond formed between the specific residue and DNA. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Iype, E.; Hütter, M.; Jansen, A. P. J.; Nedea, S. V.; Rindt, C. C. M.

doi: 10.1002/jcc.23246pmid: 23420666

Parameterization of a molecular dynamics force field is essential in realistically modeling the physicochemical processes involved in a molecular system. This step is often challenging when the equations involved in describing the force field are complicated as well as when the parameters are mostly empirical. ReaxFF is one such reactive force field which uses hundreds of parameters to describe the interactions between atoms. The optimization of the parameters in ReaxFF is done such that the properties predicted by ReaxFF matches with a set of quantum chemical or experimental data. Usually, the optimization of the parameters is done by an inefficient single‐parameter parabolic‐search algorithm. In this study, we use a robust metropolis Monte‐Carlo algorithm with simulated annealing to search for the optimum parameters for the ReaxFF force field in a high‐dimensional parameter space. The optimization is done against a set of quantum chemical data for MgSO4 hydrates. The optimized force field reproduced the chemical structures, the equations of state, and the water binding curves of MgSO4 hydrates. The transferability test of the ReaxFF force field shows the extend of transferability for a particular molecular system. This study points out that the ReaxFF force field is not indefinitely transferable. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Kerber, Torsten; Kerber, Rachel Nathaniel; Rozanska, Xavier; Sautet, Philippe; Fleurat‐Lessard, Paul

doi: 10.1002/jcc.23225pmid: 23345191

We present a new software to easily perform QM:MM and QM:QM' calculations called QMX. It follows the subtraction scheme and it is implemented in the Atomic Simulation Environment (ASE). Special attention is paid to couple molecular calculations with periodic boundaries approaches. QMX inherits the flexibility and versatility of the ASE package: any combination of methods namely force field, semiempirical, first principle, and ab initio, can be used as hybrid potential energy surface (PES). Its ease of use is demonstrated by considering the adsorption of Al2Cl3Me3 on silica surface and by combining different levels of theory (from standard DFT to MP2 calculations) for the so‐called High Level cluster with standard PW91 density functional theory calculations for the Low Level environment. It is shown that the High Level cluster must contain the silanol group close to the aluminum atoms. The bridging adsorption is favored by 58 kJ mol−1 at the MP2:PW91 level with respect to the terminal position. Using large clusters at the MP2:PW91 level, it is shown that PW91 calculations are sufficient for structure optimization but that embedded methods are required for accurate energy profiles. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.