Anharmonic bond angles interactions

A molecule-independent, generalized force field for predictive calculations can be obtained by the inclusion of additional terms such as van der Waals and torsional angle interactions. This adds an additional anharmonic part to the potential (see below) but, more importantly, also leads to changes in the whole force field thus the force constants used in molecular mechanics force fields are not directly related to parameters obtained and used in spectroscopy. It is easy to understand this dissimilarity since in spectroscopy the bonding and angle bending potentials describe relatively small vibrations around an equilibrium geometry that, at least... 

To obtain the anharmonic terms in the potential, on the other hand, the choice of coordinates is important 130,131). The reason is that the anharmonic terms can only be obtained from a perturbation expansion on the harmonic results, and the convergence of this expansion differs considerably from one set of coordinates to another. In addition it is usually necessary to assume that some of the anharmonic interaction terms are zero and this is true only for certain classes of internal coordinates. For example, one can define an angle bend in HjO either by a rectilinear displacement of the hydrogen atoms or by a curvilinear displacement. At the harmonic level there is no difference between the two, but one can see that a rectilinear displacement introduces some stretching of the OH bonds whereas the curvilinear displacement does not. The curvilinear coordinate follows more closely the bottom of the potential well (Fig. 12) than the linear displacement and this manifests itself in rather small cubic stretch-bend interaction constants whereas these constants are larger for rectilinear coordinates. A final and important point about the choice of curvilinear coordinates is that they are geometrically defined (i.e. independent of nuclear masses) so that the resulting force constants do not depend on isotopic species. At the anharmonic level this is not true for rectilinear coordinates as it has been shown that the imposition of the Eckart conditions, that the internal coordinates shall introduce no overall translation or rotation of the body, forces them to have a small isotopic dependence 132). 

EAS (Engler, Andose, Schleyer) [184] is quite an old force field designed to model alkanes exclusively. The harmonic potential is used for the bond stretching and cubic anharmonic for the valence angle bending. No out of plane, electrostatic or cross terms are included. The nonbonded interactions are represented by the Buchingham potential. 

The discussion so far may be summarized as follows. There are two reasons for using curvilinear co-ordinates to represent the anharmonic force field of a polyatomic molecule, despite their apparent complexity. The first is that it is only in this way that we obtain cubic and quartic force constants which are independent of isotopic substitution. The second is that in terms of curvilinear bond-stretching and angle-bending co-ordinates we obtain the simplest expression for the force field, in the sense that cubic and quartic interaction terms are minimized. The first reason is compulsive the second reason is not compulsive, but it does make the curvilinear co-ordinates very desirable. 

---