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Quantum mechanical (QM) calculations, classical grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations, and classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are performed to test the effect of charge distribution on hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) adsorption and diffusion in IRMOF-10. Several different methods for mapping QM electron distributions onto atomic point charges are explored, including the electrostatic potential (ESP) method, Mulliken population analysis, Lowdin population analysis, and natural bond orbital analysis. Classical GCMC and MD simulations of RDX in IRMOF-10 are performed using 15 combinations of charge sources of RDX and IRMOF-10. As the charge distributions vary, interaction potential energies, the adsorption loading, and the self-diffusivities are significantly different. None of the 15 combinations are able to quantitatively capture the dependence of the energy of adsorption on local configuration of RDX as observed in the QM calculations. We observe changes in the charge distributions of RDX and IRMOF-10 with the introduction of an RDX molecule into the cage. We also observe a large dispersion contribution to the interaction energy from QM calculations that is not reproduced in the classical simulations, indicating that the source of discrepancy may not lie exclusively with the assignment of charges.

Different possible pathways of the aminolysis reaction of succinic anhydride were investigated by applying high level electronic structure theory, examining the general base catalysis by amine and the general acid catalysis by acetic acid, and studying the effect of solvent. The density functional theory at the B3LYP/6-31G(d) and B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) levels was employed to investigate the reaction pathways for the aminolysis reaction between succinic anhydride and methylamine. The single point ab initio calculations were based on the second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) with 6-31G(d) and 6-311++G(d,p) basis sets and CCSD(T)/6-31G(d) level calculations for geometries optimized at the B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) level of theory. A detailed analysis of the atomic movements during the process of concerted aminolysis was further obtained by intrinsic reaction coordinate calculations. Solvent effects were assessed by the polarized continuum model method. The results show that the concerted mechanism of noncatalyzed aminolysis has distinctly lower activation energy compared with the addition/elimination stepwise mechanism. In the case of the process catalyzed by a second methylamine molecule, asynchronous proton transfer takes place, while the transition vectors of the acid-catalyzed transition states correspond to the simultaneous motion of protons. The most favorable pathway of the reaction was found through the bifunctional acid catalyzed stepwise mechanism that involves formation of eight-membered rings in the transition state structures. The difference between the activation barriers for the two mechanisms averages 2 kcal/mol at various levels of theory.

In this paper, we report on the interactions of 1,3,5-trinitro-s-triazine, or cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX), a highly explosive (HE) molecule, with the metal-organic frameworks (MOF) called IRMOF-1. IRMOFs are predicted to act as preconcentrators for explosive molecules or other adsorbates because of their high porosity and selectivity through changeable organic linkers. We choose IRMOF-1 as a benchmark test case for further investigations of MOF-HE interactions. We use the density-functionaltheory-based code FIREBALL to estimate physisorption energies for the RDX molecules both in the interior and on surfaces of IRMOF-1 cages. Our calculations show that the RDX molecules interact more strongly with the exterior IRMOF-1 surface than with the interior one, suggesting an important role of steric hindrance inside periodic IRMOF-1 cages. We extended our investigations to moleculardynamics simulations at room temperature to see if any trapping configurations of RDX molecule result from the configurations at zero temperature.