Atomistic simulations, force-fields

Atomistically detailed models account for all atoms. The force field contains additive contributions specified in tenns of bond lengtlis, bond angles, torsional angles and possible crosstenns. It also includes non-bonded contributions as tire sum of van der Waals interactions, often described by Lennard-Jones potentials, and Coulomb interactions. Atomistic simulations are successfully used to predict tire transport properties of small molecules in glassy polymers, to calculate elastic moduli and to study plastic defonnation and local motion in quasi-static simulations [fy7, ( ]. The atomistic models are also useful to interiDret scattering data [fyl] and NMR measurements [70] in tenns of local order. 

This article reviews progress in the field of atomistic simulation of liquid crystal systems. The first part of the article provides an introduction to molecular force fields and the main simulation methods commonly used for liquid crystal systems molecular mechanics, Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics. The usefulness of these three techniques is highlighted and some of the problems associated with the use of these methods for modelling liquid crystals are discussed. The main section of the article reviews some of the recent science that has arisen out of the use of these modelling techniques. The importance of the nematic mean field and its influence on molecular structure is discussed. The preferred ordering of liquid crystal molecules at surfaces is examined, along with the results from simulation studies of bilayers and bulk liquid crystal phases. The article also discusses some of the limitations of current work and points to likely developments over the next few years. 

The rapid rise in computer speed over recent years has led to atom-based simulations of liquid crystals becoming an important new area of research. Molecular mechanics and Monte Carlo studies of isolated liquid crystal molecules are now routine. However, care must be taken to model properly the influence of a nematic mean field if information about molecular structure in a mesophase is required. The current state-of-the-art consists of studies of (in the order of) 100 molecules in the bulk, in contact with a surface, or in a bilayer in contact with a solvent. Current simulation times can extend to around 10 ns and are sufficient to observe the growth of mesophases from an isotropic liquid. The results from a number of studies look very promising, and a wealth of structural and dynamic data now exists for bulk phases, monolayers and bilayers. Continued development of force fields for liquid crystals will be particularly important in the next few years, and particular emphasis must be placed on the development of all-atom force fields that are able to reproduce liquid phase densities for small molecules. Without these it will be difficult to obtain accurate phase transition temperatures. It will also be necessary to extend atomistic models to several thousand molecules to remove major system size effects which are present in all current work. This will be greatly facilitated by modern parallel simulation methods that allow molecular dynamics simulations to be carried out in parallel on multi-processor systems [115]. 

It is the purpose of this section to review ways in which processes involving electrons are either explicitly accounted for in calculations on polymeric systems or in which a more or less rigorous abstraction from the electronic degrees of freedom into effective models of a coarser-grained nature is performed. The next level up from electrons is obviously atoms. Hence, this section deals mainly with the connection between quantum chemistry and atomistic (force field) simulations. Calculations which exclusively use quantum chemistry are not covered. This excludes, for example, all of the recent work on metallocene catalysis. 

This bimodal dynamics of hydration water is intriguing. A model based on dynamic equilibrium between quasi-bound and free water molecules on the surface of biomolecules (or self-assembly) predicts that the orientational relaxation at a macromolecular surface should indeed be biexponential, with a fast time component (few ps) nearly equal to that of the free water while the long time component is equal to the inverse of the rate of bound to free transition [4], In order to gain an in depth understanding of hydration dynamics, we have carried out detailed atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulation studies of water dynamics at the surface of an anionic micelle of cesium perfluorooctanoate (CsPFO), a cationic micelle of cetyl trimethy-lainmonium bromide (CTAB), and also at the surface of a small protein (enterotoxin) using classical, non-polarizable force fields. In particular we have studied the hydrogen bond lifetime dynamics, rotational and dielectric relaxation, translational diffusion and vibrational dynamics of the surface water molecules. In this article we discuss the water dynamics at the surface of CsPFO and of enterotoxin. 

Classical molecular simulation methods such as MC and MD represent atomistic/molecular-level modeling, which discards the electronic degrees of freedom while utilizing parameters transferred from quantum level simulation as force field information. A molecule in the simulation is composed of beads representing atoms, where the interactions are described by classical potential functions. Each bead has a dispersive pair-wise interaction as described by the Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential, ULj(Ly) ... 

In this chapter we focus on atomistic predictions of thermophysical and mechanical properties of HMX crystals and liquid important to the development of reliable mesoscale equations of state. The outline of the remainder of the chapter is as follows In section 2 we describe briefly the philosophy and overall approach we have taken to force field development, including the results of quantum chemistry calculations for HMX and smaller model compounds that were used in the force field parameterization. The focus of section 3 is on the properties of liquid HMX, for which experimental data are completely lacking. Structural, thermal, and mechanical properties of the three pure crystal polymorphs of HMX are presented in section 4, where the results are compared to the available experimental data. At the ends of sections 3 and 4 we discuss briefly the importance of the various properties with mesoscale models of high explosives, with an emphasis on conditions relevant to weak shock initiation. We conclude in section 5, and provide our opinions (and justifications, based on our interactions with mesoscale modelers) regarding which HMX properties and phenomena should comprise the next targets for study via atomistic simulation. 

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