Systematic comparison of force fields for microscopic simulations of NaCl in aqueous solutions: Diffusion, free energy of hydration and structural properties
In this paper we compare different force fields that are widely used (Gromacs, Charmm-22/x-Plor, Charmm-27, Amber-1999, OPLS-AA) in biophysical simulations containing aqueous NaCl. We show that the uncertainties of the microscopic parameters of, in particular, sodium and, to a lesser extent, chloride translate into large differences in the computed radial-distribution functions. This uncertainty reflects the incomplete experimental knowledge of the structural properties of ionic aqueous solutions at finite molarity.We discuss possible implications on the computation of potential of mean force and effective potentials.
Our atomistic molecular dynamics simulations reveal the existence of bound and free water molecules in the hydration layer of an aqueous micelle. The bound water molecules can be either singly or doubly hydrogen bonded to the polar head group on the surface of the micelle. The ratio of bound to free water is found to be approximately equal to 9:1 at 300 K.
Hydrophobic hydration plays a crucial role in self-assembly processes over multiple length-scales, but the extrapolation of molecular-scale models to larger length-scale hydration phenomena is sometimes not warranted. Scaled-particle theories are based upon an interpolative view of that issue. We revisit the scaled-particle theory proposed thirty years ago by Stillinger, adopt a practical generalization, and consider the implications for hydrophobic hydration in light of our current understanding. The generalization is based upon identifying a molecular length, implicit in previous application…
In this study, molecular dynamic simulations are employed to investigate the nucleation of NaCl crystal in solutions. According to the simulations, the dissolved behaviors of NaCl in water are dependent on ion concentrations. With increasing NaCl concentrations, the dissolved Na$^+$ and Cl$^-$ ions tend to be aggregated in solutions. In combination with our recent studies, the aggregate of dissolved solutes is mainly ascribed to the hydrophobic interactions. Thermodynamically, no barrier is needed to overcome in the formation of the solute aggregate. This is different from the two-step nucleat…
In this work, we use large-scale molecular dynamics simulations coupled to free energy calculations to identify for the first time a limit of stability (spinodal) and a change in the nucleation mechanism in aqueous NaCl solutions. This is a system of considerable atmospheric, geological and technical significance. We find that the supersaturated metastable NaCl solution reaches its limit of stability at sufficiently high salt concentrations, as indicated by the composition dependence of the salt chemical potential, indicating the transition to a phase separation by spinodal decomposition. Howe…
Tasker type III polar terminations of ionic crystals carry a net surface charge as well as a dipole moment and are fundamentally unstable. In contact with electrolytes, such polar surfaces can be stabilized by adsorption of counter ions from solution to form electric double layers (EDLs). In a previous work (J. Chem. Phys 147, 104702 (2017)) we reported on a classical force field based molecular dynamics study of a prototype model system namely a NaCl(111) slab interfaced with an aqueous NaCl solution on both sides. A serious hurdle in the simulation is that the finite width of the slab admits…
We used molecular dynamics simulations and the path sampling technique known as forward flux sampling to study homogeneous nucleation of NaCl crystals from supersaturated aqueous solutions at 298 K and 1 bar. Nucleation rates were obtained for a range of salt concentrations for the Joung-Cheatham NaCl force field combined with the SPC/E water model. The calculated nucleation rates are significantly lower than available experimental measurements. The estimates for the nucleation rates in this work do not rely on classical nucleation theory, but the pathways observed in the simulations suggest t…
Studying the freezing of saltwater on a molecular level is of fundamental importance for improving freeze desalination techniques. Here, we investigate the freezing process of NaCl solutions using a combination of x-ray diffraction and molecular dynamics simulations (MD) for different salt-water concentrations, ranging from seawater conditions to saturation. A linear superposition model reproduces well the brine rejection due to hexagonal ice Ih formation and allows us to quantify the fraction of ice and brine. Furthermore, upon cooling at T = 233 K we observe the formation of NaCl$\cdot$2H$_2…
We investigated the free corrosion potential at an interface between an Al electrode and an aqueous NaCl solution (NaCl(aq)) under acidic conditions via density functional theory combined with the effective screening medium and reference interaction site model (ESM-RISM). Firstly, the electrode potentials for the anodic and cathodic corrosion reactions were obtained from the grand potential profile as a function of the electron chemical potential at the interface. Thereafter, we determined the free corrosion potential using the Tafel extrapolation method. The results of the free corrosion pote…
Chemical thermodynamic models of solvent and solute activities predict the equilibrium behaviour of aqueous solutions. How-ever, these models are semi-empirical. They represent micro-scale ion and solvent behaviours that control the macroscopic properties using small numbers of parameters whose values are obtained by fitting to activities and other partial derivatives of the Gibbs energy measured for the bulk solutions. We have conducted atomistic simulations of aqueous electrolyte solutions (MgCl2 and CaCl2) to determine the parameters of aqueous thermodynamic hydration models. We have implem…
Ion hydration structure and free energy establish criteria for understanding selective ion binding in potassium K+ ion channels, and may be significant to understanding blocking mechanisms as well. Recently, we investigated the hydration properties of Ba2+, the most potent blocker of K+ channels among the simple metal ions. Here, we use a similar method of combining ab initio molecular dynamics simulations, statistical mechanical theory, and electronic structure calculations to probe the fundamental hydration properties of Sr2+, which does not block bacterial K+ channels. The radial distributi…
Charge hydration asymmetry (CHA)--a characteristic dependence of hydration free energy on the sign of the solute charge--quantifies the asymmetric response of water to electric field at microscopic level. Accurate estimates of CHA are critical for understanding hydration effects ubiquitous in chemistry and biology. However, measuring hydration energies of charged species is fraught with significant difficulties, which lead to unacceptably large (up to 300%) variation in the available estimates of the CHA effect. We circumvent these difficulties by developing a framework which allows us to extr…
The HO$^-$(aq) ion participates in myriad aqueous phase chemical processes of biological and chemical interest. A molecularly valid description of its hydration state, currently poorly understood, is a natural prerequisite to modeling chemical transformations involving HO$^-$(aq). Here it is shown that the statistical mechanical quasi-chemical theory of solutions predicts that $\mathrm{HO\cdot[H_2O]_3{}^-}$ is the dominant inner shell coordination structure for HO$^-$(aq) under standard conditions. Experimental observations and other theoretical calculations are adduced to support this conclus…
Direct, all-atom calculations of the free energy of hydration of aqueous deca-alanine structures --- holistically including backbone and side-chain interactions together --- show that attractive interactions and the thermal expansion of the solvent explain the inverse temperature signatures that have been interpreted traditionally in favor of hydrophobic mechanisms for stabilizing the structure and function of soluble proteins.
The nature of variations of ultrasonic wave velocity(v) and attenuation constant(α) with the concentration(c) in aqueous solutions of NaCl, KCl and CsCl are investigated at room temperature(250C) at 1MHz and 2 MHz wave frequency. Fourier Spectrum Pulse-Echo (FSPE) technique is used to achieve better accuracy in measurement, particularly for α measurement. In NaCl and KCl abrupt changes in the values of v and α are noticed at particular solution concentrations whereas, for CsCl almost smooth variation in v is observed over the whole concentration range for both of the frequencies 1 and 2 MHz . …
Through molecular dynamics simulations considering thermal vibration of surface atoms, ionic behaviors in concentrated NaCl solutions confined between discretely charged silicon surfaces have been investigated. The electric double layer structure was found sensitive to the density and distribution of surface charges. Due to the surface charge discreteness, slight charge inversion appeared which depended on the surface charge density, bulk concentration and confinement. In the nanoconfined NaCl solutions differently concentrated from 0.2 M to 4.0 M, the locations of accumulation layers for Na+ …
We investigated isolated sodium/chloride aqueous droplets at the microscopic level, which comprise from about 5k to 1M water molecules and whose salt concentrations are 0.2$m$ (brackish water) and 0.6$m$ (sea water), by means of molecular dynamics simulations based on an \emph{ab initio}-based polarizable force field. The size of our largest droplets is at the submicron particle marine aerosol scale. From our simulations, we investigated ion spatial distributions, ion aggregates (size, composition, lifetime and distribution), droplet surface potentials and the densities of the water vapor surr…
We studied the hydration of a single methanol molecule in aqueous solution by first-principle DFT-based molecular dynamics simulation. The calculations show that the local structural and short-time dynamical properties of the water molecules remain almost unchanged by the presence of the methanol, confirming the observation from recent experimental structural data for dilute solutions. We also see, in accordance with this experimental work, a distinct shell of water molecules that consists of about 15 molecules. We found no evidence for a strong tangential ordering of the water molecules in th…
Using a neural network potential (ANI-1ccx) generated from quantum data on a large data set of molecules and pairs of molecules, isothermal, constant volume simulations demonstrate that the model can be as accurate as ab initio molecular dynamics for simulations of pure liquid water and the aqueous solvation of a methane molecule. No theoretical or experimental data for the liquid phase is used to train the model, suggesting that the ANI-1ccx approach is an effective method to link high level ab initio methods to potentials for large scale simulations.
A molecular level understanding of the properties of electroactive vanadium species in aqueous solution is crucial for enhancing the performance of vanadium redox flow batteries (RFB). Here, we employ Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics (CPMD) simulations based on density functional theory to investigate the hydration structures, first hydrolysis reaction and diffusion of aqueous V$^{2+}$, V$^{3+}$, VO$^{2+}$, and VO$_2^+$ ions at 300 K. The results indicate that the first hydration shell of both V$^{2+}$ and V$^{3+}$ contains six water molecules, while VO$^{2+}$ is coordinated to five and VO$_2…
In aqueous solutions, dissolved ions interact strongly with the surrounding water, thereby modifying the solution properties in an ion-specific manner. These ion-hydration interactions can be accounted for theoretically on a mean-field level by including phenomenological terms in the free energy that correspond to the most dominant ion-specific interactions. Minimizing this free energy leads to modified Poisson-Boltzmann equations with appropriate boundary conditions. Here, we review how this strategy has been used to predict some of the ways ion-specific effects can modify the forces acting w…
Can DFT-trained neural network potentials reproduce structure, solvation, and water-exchange properties in aqueous magnesium solutions?
Institute of Physics, University of Augsburg（奥格斯堡大学物理研究所）；Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna（维也纳大学物理学院）；Research Platform on Accelerating Photoreaction Discovery (ViRAPID), University of Vienna（维也纳大学光反应加速发现研究平台）
Terahertz-induced local-field dynamics and transient birefringence in aqueous electrolytes
University of Paderborn（帕德博恩大学）；Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS)（先进系统理解中心）；Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf（德累斯顿-罗斯多夫亥姆霍兹中心）；Technische Universität Dresden（德累斯顿工业大学）
We have performed Molecular Dynamics simulations of ectoine, hydroxyectoine and urea in explicit solvent. Special attention has been spent on the local surrounding structure of water molecules. Our results indicate that ectoine and hydroxyectoine are able to accumulate more water molecules than urea by a pronounced ordering due to hydrogen bonds. We have validated that the charging of the molecules is of main importance resulting in a well defined hydration sphere. The influence of a varying salt concentration is also investigated. Finally we present experimental results of a DPPC monolayer ph…
Inorganic salts are a natural component of biomass which have a significant effect on the product yields from a variety of biomass conversion processes. Understanding their effect on biomass at the microscopic level can help discover their mechanistic role. We present a study of the effect of aqueous sodium chloride (NaCl) on the largest component of biomass, cellulose, focused on the thermodynamic and structural effect of a sodium ion on the cellulose tetramer, and fibril. Replica exchange molecular dynamics simulations of a cellulose tetramer reveal a number of preferred cellulose-Na contact…
Transport properties of concentrated electrolytes have been analyzed using classical molecular dynamics simulations with the algorithms and parameters typical of simulations describing complex electrokinetic phenomena. The electrical conductivity and transport numbers of electrolytes containing monovalent (KCl), divalent (MgCl$_2$), a mixture of both (KCl + MgCl$_2$), and trivalent (LaCl$_3$) cations have been obtained from simulations of the electrolytes in electric fields of different magnitude. The results obtained for different simulation parameters have been discussed and compared with ex…
Hydroxide ion transport and structure in aqueous media is fundamental to many chemical and biological processes. Research on hydroxide behavior has primarily focused on a single fully solvated hydroxide, either as an isolated cluster or in the bulk. This work presents the first computational study to consider a medium of low hydration levels where the hydroxide ion is microsolvated. Under such conditions, hydroxide ions are shown to be predominantly present as unique water-bridged double-hydroxide charged clusters, distinct from previously reported structures under hydrated conditions. Althoug…
Recent progress on molecular theories of hydration of nonpolar solutes in aqueous solution has led to new ways of thinking about the old issue of free, or "available," volume in liquids. This article surveys the principal new results with particular attention to general issues of packing in liquids.
A major goal of many spectroscopic techniques is to provide comprehensive information on the local chemical environment. Electron transfer mediated decay (ETMD) is a sensitive probe of the environment since it is actively involved in this non-local radiationless decay process through electron and energy transfer steps. We report the first experimental observation of ETMD in the liquid phase. Using liquid-jet X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy we explore LiCl aqueous solution, and detect low-energy electrons unambiguously emerging from the ETMD processes of core-ionized Li+. We interpret the expe…
The aggregation of clay particles in aqueous solution is a ubiquitous everyday process of broad environmental and technological importance. However, it is poorly understood at the all-important atomistic level since it depends on a complex and dynamic interplay of solvent-mediated electrostatic, hydrogen-bonding, and dispersion interactions. With this in mind we have performed an extensive set of classical molecular dynamics simulations (included enhanced sampling simulations) on the interactions between model kaolinite nanoparticles in pure and salty water. Our simulations reveal highly aniso…
Accurate models of alkali and halide ions in aqueous solution are necessary for computer simulations of a broad variety of systems. Previous efforts to develop ion force fields have generally focused on reproducing experimental measurements of aqueous solution properties such as hydration free energies and ion-water distribution functions. This dependency limits transferability of the resulting parameters because of the variety and known limitations of water models. We present a solvent-independent approach to calibrating ion parameters based exclusively on crystal lattice properties. Our proc…
We study NaCl ion-pair dissociation in a dilute aqueous solution using computer simulations both for the full system with long range Coulomb interactions and for a well chosen reference system with short range intermolecular interactions. Analyzing results using concepts from Local Molecular Field (LMF) theory and the recently proposed AI-based analysis tool "State predictive information bottleneck" (SPIB) we show that the system with short range interactions can accurately reproduce the transition rate for the dissociation process, the dynamics for moving between the underlying metastable sta…
The study of the modification of interfacial properties between an organic solvent and aqueous electrolyte solutions is presented by using electrostatic Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) simulations. In this article the parametrization for the DPD repulsive parameters aij for the electrolyte components is calculated considering the dependence of the Flory-Huggins \c{hi} parameter on the concentration and the kind of electrolyte added, by means of the activity coefficients. In turn, experimental data was used to obtain the activity coefficients of the electrolytes as a function of their conce…
The absolute-scale electronic energetics of liquid water and aqueous solutions, both in the bulk and at associated interfaces, are the central determiners of water-based chemistry. However, such information is generally experimentally inaccessible. We demonstrate that a refined implementation of the liquid microjet photoelectron spectroscopy (PES) technique can be adopted to address this. Implementing concepts from condensed matter physics, we establish novel all-liquid-phase vacuum and equilibrated solution-metal-electrode Fermi level referencing procedures. This enables the precise and accur…
In the context of nuclear fuel recycling and environmental issues, the understanding of the properties of radio-elements with various approaches remains a challenge regarding their dangerousness. Moreover, experimentally, it is imperative to work at sufficiently high concentrations to reach the sensitivities of the analysis tools, which often leads to precipitation for some of them, and stabilizing of specific oxidation states of some actinides remains a challenge, thus making it difficult to extract general trends across the actinide series. Complementary to experiments, modelling can be used…
A recent Monte Carlo simulation determined the potential of mean force between two lysozyme molecules in various aqueous solutions [M. Lund et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 258105 (2008)]. The study involved a combination of explicit solvent and continuum model simulations and showed that there are significant ion-specific protein-protein interactions due to hydrophobic patches on the protein surfaces. In this paper we use the results of their study to determine the phase diagram for lysozyme for aqueous solutions of NaCl and NaI. Two of the three phase diagrams have a stable fluid-fluid critical …
Electrokinetic flows of an aqueous NaCl solution in nanochannels with negatively charged surfaces are studied using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The four transport coefficients that characterise the response to weak electric and pressure fields, namely the coefficients for the electrical current in response to the electric field ($M^{jj}$) and the pressure field ($M^{jm}$), and those for the mass flow in response to the same fields ($M^{mj}$ and $M^{mm}$), are obtained in the linear regime using a Green--Kubo approach. Nonequilibrium simulations with explicit external fields are also c…
The alkali metal ions in aqueous electrolyte solutions have strong influence on the surrounding network structure of water formed through hydrogen bonds. The extent of ionic perturbation to the structure of water depends on the nature of individual ions and the solute concentration. Experimental techniques like Neutron diffraction, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, isotopic substitution study, viscosity measurements and related theoretical or simulation studies are used to understand the characteristics features of the structural changes in these solutions. Recent ultrasonic studies on aq…
The performance of gold nanoparticles (NPs) in applications depends critically on the structure of the NP-solvent interface, at which the electrostatic surface polarization is one of the key characteristics that affects hydration, ionic adsorption, and electrochemical reactions. Here, we demonstrate significant effects of explicit metal polarizability on the solvation and electrostatic properties of bare gold NPs in aqueous electrolyte solutions of sodium salts of various anions (Cl$^-$, BF$_4$$^-$, PF$_6$$^-$, Nip$^-$(nitrophenolate), and 3- and 4-valent hexacyanoferrate (HCF)), using classic…
We study the solvation and electrostatic properties of bare gold (Au) nanoparticles (NPs) of $1$-$2$ nm in size in aqueous electrolyte solutions of sodium salts of various anions with large physicochemical diversity (Cl$^-$, BF$_4$$^-$, PF$_6$$^-$, Nip$^-$(nitrophenolate), 3- and 4-valent hexacyanoferrate (HCF)) using nonpolarizable, classical molecular dynamics computer simulations. We find a substantial facet selectivity in the adsorption structure and spatial distribution of the ions at the Au-NPs: while sodium and some of the anions (e.g., Cl$^-$, HCF$^{3-}$) adsorb more at the `edgy' (100…
How important is the dielectric constant in water modeling? Evaluation of the performance of the TIP4P/$\varepsilon$ force field and its compatibility with the Joung-Cheatham NaCl model
Grand-canonical molecular dynamics simulations powered by a hybrid 4D nonequilibrium MD/MC method: Implementation in LAMMPS and applications to electrolyte solutions
