Martin Lísal

An examination of the five-site potential (TIP5P) for water

Parameterization of the five-site model (TIP5P) for water [M. W. Mahoney and W. L. Jorgensen, J. Chem. Phys. 112, 8910 (2000)] has been examined by several computer simulation methods accounting properly for long-range forces. The structural and thermodynamic properties at a pressure of 1 atm over the temperature range (−25 °C,+75 °C) and the vapor–liquid coexistence have been determined. It is shown that the simple spherical cutoff method used in the original simulations to find optimized parameters of this five-site model yields results that differ from those obtained by both the Ewald summation and reaction field methods. Consequently, the pivot property to which the parameters were adjusted, the location of the density maximum at 1 atm, does not agree with experimental values. The equilibrium properties then show only a fair agreement with experimental data and are uniformly inferior to those of the four-site TIP4P water over the entire coexistence range.

Simulation of chemical reaction equilibria by the reaction ensemble Monte Carlo method: a review†

Understanding and predicting the equilibrium behaviour of chemically reacting systems in highly non-ideal environments is critical to many fields of science and technology, including solvation, nanoporous materials, catalyst design, combustion and propulsion science, shock physics and many more. A method with recent success in predicting the equilibrium behaviour of reactions under non-ideal conditions is the reaction ensemble Monte Carlo method (RxMC). RxMC has been applied to reactions confined in porous solids or near solid surfaces, reactions at high temperature and/or high pressure, reactions in solution and at phase interfaces. The only required information is a description of the intermolecular forces among the system molecules and standard free-energy data for the reacting components. Extensions of the original method include its combination with algorithms for systems involving phase equilibria, constant-enthalpy and constant-internal energy adiabatic conditions, a method to include reaction kinetics, a method to study the dynamics of reacting systems, and a mesoscale method to simulate long-chain molecule phase separation. This manuscript surveys the various applications and adaptations of the RxMC method to date. Additionally, the relationship between the RxMC method and other techniques that simulate chemical reaction behaviour is given, along with insight into some technical nuances not found in the pioneering papers.

Molecular Simulation of Aqueous Electrolyte Solubility. 2. Osmotic Ensemble Monte Carlo Methodology for Free Energy and Solubility Calculations and Application to NaCl

We present a new and computationally efficient methodology using osmotic ensemble Monte Carlo (OEMC) simulation to calculate chemical potential-concentration curves and the solubility of aqueous electrolytes. The method avoids calculations for the solid phase, incorporating readily available data from thermochemical tables that are based on well-defined reference states. It performs simulations of the aqueous solution at a fixed number of water molecules, pressure, temperature, and specified overall electrolyte chemical potential. Insertion/deletion of ions to/from the system is implemented using fractional ions, which are coupled to the system via a coupling parameter λ that varies between 0 (no interaction between the fractional ions and the other particles in the system) and 1 (full interaction between the fractional ions and the other particles of the system). Transitions between λ-states are accepted with a probability following from the osmotic ensemble partition function. Biasing weights associated with the λ-states are used in order to efficiently realize transitions between them; these are determined by means of the Wang-Landau method. We also propose a novel scaling procedure for λ, which can be used for both nonpolarizable and polarizable models of aqueous electrolyte systems. The approach is readily extended to involve other solvents, multiple electrolytes, and species complexation reactions. The method is illustrated for NaCl, using SPC/E water and several force field models for NaCl from the literature, and the results are compared with experiment at ambient conditions. Good agreement is obtained for the chemical potential-concentration curve and the solubility prediction is reasonable. Future improvements to the predictions will require improved force field models.

An enhanced entangled polymer model for dissipative particle dynamics

We develop an alternative polymer model to capture entanglements within the dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) framework by using simplified bond-bond repulsive interactions to prevent bond crossings. We show that structural and thermodynamic properties can be improved by applying a segmental repulsive potential (SRP) that is a function of the distance between the midpoints of the segments, rather than the minimum distance between segments. The alternative approach, termed the modified segmental repulsive potential (mSRP), is shown to produce chain structures and thermodynamic properties that are similar to the softly repulsive, flexible chains of standard DPD. Parameters for the mSRP are determined from topological, structural, and thermodynamic considerations. The effectiveness of the mSRP in capturing entanglements is demonstrated by calculating the diffusion and mechanical properties of an entangled polymer melt.

Molecular simulation of aqueous electrolyte solubility. 3. Alkali-halide salts and their mixtures in water and in hydrochloric acid.

We extend the osmotic ensemble Monte Carlo (OEMC) molecular simulation method (Moučka et al. J. Phys Chem. B 2011, 115, 7849-7861) for directly calculating the aqueous solubility of electrolytes and for calculating their chemical potentials as functions of concentration to cases involving electrolyte hydrates and mixed electrolytes, including invariant points involving simultaneous precipitation of several solutes. The method utilizes a particular semigrand canonical ensemble, which performs simulations of the solution at a fixed number of solvent molecules, pressure, temperature, and specified overall electrolyte chemical potential. It avoids calculations for the solid phase, incorporating available solid chemical potential data from thermochemical tables, which are based on well-defined reference states, or from other sources. We apply the method to a range of alkali halides in water and to selected examples involving LiCl monohydrate, mixed electrolyte solutions involving water and hydrochloric acid, and invariant points in these solvents. The method uses several existing force-field models from the literature, and the results are compared with experiment. The calculated results agree qualitatively well with the experimental trends and are of reasonable accuracy. The accuracy of the calculated solubility is highly dependent on the solid chemical potential value and also on the force-field model used. Our results indicate that pairwise additive effective force-field models developed for the solution phase are unlikely to also be good models for the corresponding crystalline solid. We find that, in our OEMC simulations, each ionic force-field model is characterized by a limiting value of the total solution chemical potential and a corresponding aqueous concentration. For higher values of the imposed chemical potential, the solid phase in the simulation grows in size without limit.

Self-assembly of surfactants in a supercritical solvent from lattice Monte Carlo simulations

We modify Larson’s lattice model [J. Chem. Phys. 83, 2411 (1985)] and use it to study self-assembly of surfactants in a supercritical solvent by large-scale Monte Carlo simulations. Carbon dioxide and perfluoroalkylpoly(ethylene oxide) serve as prototypes for the solvent and surfactant, respectively. Larson-model type parameters for carbon dioxide and perfluoroalkylpoly(ethylene oxide) are obtained using experimental values of critical parameters and solubility along with a modified Berthelot combining rule. We perform canonical Monte Carlo simulations at a supercritical temperature, varying the number of surfactant head and tail segments, the solvent density and the surfactant concentration. Various properties such as the critical micelle concentration, the aggregate size distribution, and the size and shape of the micelles are evaluated and pseudophase diagrams are constructed. We further investigate the ability of the surfactant solutions to dissolve more solute than solutions without surfactants by ca...

The reaction ensemble method for the computer simulation of chemical and phase equilibria. II. The Br2+Cl2+BrCl system

The reaction ensemble Monte Carlo (REMC) method [W. R. Smith and B. Třiska, J. Chem. Phys. 100, 3019 (1994)] is used to study combined reaction and vapor–liquid equilibrium of the Br2+Cl2+BrCl system. The substances are modeled as nonpolar and dipolar two-site Lennard-Jones molecules with Lorentz–Berthelot mixing rules for unlike atoms. No parameters were fitted to any mixture properties in our calculations. The simulated data are compared with experimental results, and with previous simulation data for the mixture obtained by an indirect semigrand ensemble approach. The REMC method efficiently calculates the complete phase compositions, whereas only a limited subset is available experimentally. The agreement of the simulations with experiment is good. In the course of this work, we used the Gibbs ensemble Monte Carlo method (which may be regarded as a special case of the REMC method) to calculate the vapor–liquid equilibrium properties of pure BrCl; since this compound is chemically unstable, such data ...

Effect of short- and long-range forces on the properties of fluids. III. Dipolar and quadrupolar fluids

Using realistic pair potential models for acetone and carbon dioxide, both the spatial and orientational structure of these two typical multipolar (i.e. dipolar and quadrupolar, respectively) fluids is investigated in detail by computing the complete set of the site-site correlation functions, multipole-multipole correlation functions, and selected 2D correlation functions. The effect of the range of interactions on both the structural and thermodynamic properties of these fluids is studied by decomposing the potential into short- and long-range parts in the same manner as for water [Kolafa, J. and Nezbeda, I., 2000, Molec. Phys., 98, 1505; Nezbeda, I. and Lísal, M., 2001, Molec. Phys., 99, 291]. It is found that the spatial arrangement of the molecules is only marginally affected by the long-range forces. The effect of the electrostatic interactions is significant at short separations and cannot be neglected but nevertheless the overall structure of the short-range and full systems is similar as well as their dielectric constants. These findings are also reflected in the dependence of the thermodynamic properties on the potential range with the short-range models providing a very good approximation to those of the full system.

Mesoscale simulation of polymer reaction equilibrium: combining dissipative particle dynamics with reaction ensemble Monte Carlo. I. Polydispersed polymer systems.

We present a mesoscale simulation technique, called the reaction ensemble dissipative particle dynamics (RxDPD) method, for studying reaction equilibrium of polymer systems. The RxDPD method combines elements of dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) and reaction ensemble Monte Carlo (RxMC), allowing for the determination of both static and dynamical properties of a polymer system. The RxDPD method is demonstrated by considering several simple polydispersed homopolymer systems. RxDPD can be used to predict the polydispersity due to various effects, including solvents, additives, temperature, pressure, shear, and confinement. Extensions of the method to other polymer systems are straightforward, including grafted, cross-linked polymers, and block copolymers. To simulate polydispersity, the system contains full polymer chains and a single fractional polymer chain, i.e., a polymer chain with a single fractional DPD particle. The fractional particle is coupled to the system via a coupling parameter that varies between zero (no interaction between the fractional particle and the other particles in the system) and one (full interaction between the fractional particle and the other particles in the system). The time evolution of the system is governed by the DPD equations of motion, accompanied by changes in the coupling parameter. The coupling-parameter changes are either accepted with a probability derived from the grand canonical partition function or governed by an equation of motion derived from the extended Lagrangian. The coupling-parameter changes mimic forward and reverse reaction steps, as in RxMC simulations.

Thermal properties of supercritical carbon dioxide by Monte Carlo simulations

We present simulation results for the volume expansivity, isothermal compressibility, isobaric heat capacity, Joule-Thomson coefficient and speed of sound for carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in the supercritical region, using the fluctuation method based on Monte Carlo simulations in the isothermal-isobaric ensemble. We model CO 2 as a quadrupolar two-center Lennard-Jones fluid with potential parameters reported in the literature, derived from vapor-liquid equilibria (VLE) of CO 2 . We compare simulation results with an equation of state (EOS) for the two-center Lennard-Jones plus point quadrupole (2CLJQ) fluid and with a multiparametric EOS adjusted to represent CO 2 experimental data. It is concluded that the VLE-based parameters used to model CO 2 as a quadrupolar two-center Lennard-Jones fluid (both simulations and EOS) can be used with confidence for the prediction of thermodynamic properties, including those of industrial interest such as the speed of sound or Joule-Thomson coefficient, for CO 2 in the supercritical region, except in the extended critical region.