GEM*, a force field that combines Coulomb and Exchange terms calculated with Hermite Gaussians with the polarization, bonded, and modified van der Waals terms from AMOEBA is presented. GEM* is tested on an initial water model fitted at the same level as AMOEBA. The integrals required for the evaluation of the intermolecular Coulomb interactions are efficiently evaluated by means of reciprocal space methods. The GEM* water model is tested by comparing energies and forces for a series of water oligomers and MD simulations. Timings for GEM* compared to AMOEBA are presented and discussed.

The development of AMOEBA (a multipolar polarizable force field) for imidazolium based ionic liquids is presented. Our parametrization method follows the AMOEBA procedure and introduces the use of QM intermolecular total interactions as well as QM energy decomposition analysis (EDA) to fit individual interaction energy components. The distributed multipoles for the cation and anions have been derived using both the Gaussian distributed multipole analysis (GDMA) and Gaussian electrostatic model-distributed multipole (GEM-DM) methods.1 The intermolecular interactions of a 1,3-dimethylimidazolium [dmim(+)] cation with various anions, including fluoride [F(-)], chloride [Cl(-)], nitrate [NO(3)(-)], and tetraflorouborate [BF(4)(-)], were studied using quantum chemistry calculations at the MP2/6-311G(d,p) level of theory. Energy decomposition analysis was performed for each pair using the restricted variational space decomposition approach (RVS) at the HF/6-311G(d,p) level. The new force field was validated by running a series of molecular dynamic (MD) simulations and by analyzing thermodynamic and structural properties of these systems. A number of thermodynamic properties obtained from MD simulations were compared with available experimental data. The ionic liquid structure reproduced using the AMOEBA force field is also compared with the data from neutron diffraction experiment and other MD simulations. Employing GEM-DM force fields resulted in a good agreement on liquid densities ρ, enthalpies of vaporization ΔH(vap), and diffusion coefficients D(±) in comparison with conventional force fields.

We have developed a quantum chemistry-based polarizable potential for poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) in aqueous solution based on the APPLE&P polarizable ether and the SWM4-DP polarizable water models. Ether-water interactions were parametrized to reproduce the binding energy of water with 1,2-dimethoxyethane (DME) determined from high-level quantum chemistry calculations. Simulations of DME-water and PEO-water solutions at room temperature using the new polarizable potentials yielded thermodynamic properties in good agreement with experimental results. The predicted miscibility of PEO and water as a function of the temperature was found to be strongly correlated with the predicted free energy of solvation of DME. The developed nonbonded force field parameters were found to be transferrable to poly(propylene oxide) (PPO), as confirmed by capturing, at least qualitatively, the miscibility of PPO in water as a function of the molecular weight.

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The light-harvesting molecular triad consisting of carotenoid polyene (C), diaryl-porphyrin (P) and pyrrole-fullerene (C) is a donor-acceptor molecule capable of absorbing incident light in the visible range. Its ability to convert solar energy to electrical excitation and charge separation energy suggests a great potential in real-world applications. The ensemble of its conformations under ambient conditions varies widely according to its electronic state. In previous work, we applied a non-polarizable model to study the conformational distribution of the molecular triad in the ground and charge separated states. However, due to the lack of polarization, which imparts subtle changes in the charge distribution on atoms, molecular simulations fail to produce accurate average dipole moments. We developed the first polarizable model for a molecular triad to investigate the structural and dynamic properties of a molecular triad in the ground state in an explicit organic solvent, tetrahydrofuran (THF). We performed first-principles electronic structure calculations of the individual components in the triad as well as THF and then fit the partial atomic charges to the electrostatic potential using the i-RESP methodology. We validated these force field parameters by comparing the thermodynamic and dynamic properties obtained from molecular dynamics simulations with those from experiments. We enhanced the sampling of the triad conformations with replica exchange molecular dynamics simulations. We characterized the effects of induced polarization on the structural stability of the triad by analyzing the free energy landscapes constructed with polarizable force fields. Furthermore, by using principal component analysis, we found that the molecular triad conformations adopted a small range of torsional angles with induced polarization. The triad conformation solvated in polar solvent with a polarizable force field qualitatively agrees with that obtained from nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.