The intramolecular proton transfer in cationized glycine and chlorine substituted derivatives with M = Na+, Mg2+, Ni+, Cu+, and Cu2+ has been studied with the three parameter B3LYP density functional method. The coordination of metal cations to the oxygens of the carboxylic group of glycine stabilizes the zwitterionic structure. For all monocations the intramolecular proton transfer occurs readily with small energy barriers (1-2 kcalmol(-1)). For the dication Mg2+ and Cu2+ systems, the zwitterionic structure becomes very stable. However, whereas for Mg2+, the proton transfer process takes place spontaneously, for Cu2+ the reaction occurs with an important energy barrier. The substitution of the hydrogens of the amino group by chlorine atoms decreases the basicity of nitrogen, which destabilizes the zwitterionic structure. For monosubstituted glycine complexed with Na+, the zwitterionic structure still exists as a minimum, but for disubstituted glycine no minimum appears for this structure. In contrast, for Mg2+ complexed to mono- and disubstituted glycine, the zwitterionic structure remains the only minimum, since the enhanced electrostatic interaction with the dication overcomes the destabilizing effect of the chlorine atoms.

Ab initio studies of nonbonding interactions for ethylene and propene dimers were conducted at the MP2/6-311+G(2df,2pd) level. The dimers were attractive in all of the orientations studied; however, the attraction was <0.1 kcal/mol for ethylene D2h and C2h dimers, for which the pi-electron clouds or H atoms interact closely. A previously introduced transferable potential model, NIPE [Jalkanen, J.-P.; Pakkanen, T. A.; Yang, Y.; Rowley, R. L. J. Chem. Phys. 2003, 118, 5474], which is based on quantum chemical calculations of small alkane molecules, was tested against the propene and ethylene dimer data. Comparisons of results showed that interaction energies for orientations dominated by interactions between the propene methyl groups or two hydrogens were accurately predicted with the NIPE model. Interactions involving the double bond were not predicted as well, because the original NIPE regression data set did not contain any information about pi-electron systems. An extension of the NIPE model to include pi-electron interactions is proposed. Additional interaction sites are used with the same energy function as atomic interactions. This addition provides a more accurate description of the interaction energies of both ethylene and propene and extends the transferability of the NIPE model to alkenes.