Force field methods accuracy/generality

MMl, MM2, MM3, and MM4 are general-purpose organic force fields. There have been many variants of the original methods, particularly MM2. MMl is seldom used since the newer versions show measurable improvements. The MM3 method is probably one of the most accurate ways of modeling hydrocarbons. At the time of this book s publication, the MM4 method was still too new to allow any broad generalization about the results. However, the initial published results are encouraging. These are some of the most widely used force fields due to the accuracy of representation of organic molecules. MMX and MM+ are variations on MM2. These force fields use five to six valence terms, one of which is an electrostatic term and one to nine cross terms. 

Computational quantum mechanics continues to be a rapidly developing field, and its range of application, and especially the size of the molecules that can be studied, progresses with improvements in computer hardware. At present, ideal gas properties can be computed quite well, even for moderately sized molecules. Complete two-body force fields can also be developed from quantum mechanics, although generally only for small molecules, and this requires the study of pairs of molecules in a large number of separations and orientations. Once developed, such a force field can be used to compute the second virial coefficient, which can be used as a test of its accuracy, and in simulation to compute phase behavior, perhaps with corrections for multibody effects. However, this requires major computational effort and expert advice. At present, a much easier, more approximate method of obtaining condensed phase thermodynamic properties from quantum mechanics is by the use of polarizable continuum models based on COSMO calculations. 

The most rigorous dielectric continuum methods employ numerical solutions to the Poisson-Boltzmann equation [55]. As these methods are computationally quite expensive, in particular in connection with calculations of derivatives, much work has been concentrated on the development of computationally less expensive approximate continuum models of sufficient accuracy. One of the most widely used of these is the Generalized Born Solvent Accessible Surface Area (GB/SA) model developed by Still and coworkers [56,57]. The model is implemented in the MacroModel program [17,28] and parameterized for water and chloroform. It may be used in conjunction with the force fields available in MacroModel, e.g., AMBER, MM2, MM3, MMFF, OPTS. It should be noted that the original parameterization of the GB/SA model is based on the OPLS force field. 

In the spirit of the above observation, anharmonic vibrational spectroscopy calculations provide, by comparison with experiment, an evaluation of the quality of the potential surface used. It seems important to use spectroscopy as a way to compare the relative accuracies of different force fields. The results may, of course, differ from case to case. A crude general picture that seems to emerge from a limited set of small molecules (that includes HjO, HCOOH, CH3COOH) [104] indicates that MP2, B97 and B3LYP are very roughly comparable in the agreement with experimental spectroscopy, while HCTH and BLYP functionals do significantly less well (in this order). Much more can be learned about the quality of potential surfaces from different types of ab initio and DFT methods, but this will require systematic studies for various types of molecules. 

In this approach, a part of the system (the solute M) is treated explicitly by a quantum mechanical (QM) method, while another part (the bulk solvent S) is approximated by a standard Molecular Mechanics (MM) force field. It is clear that such a method takes advantage of the accuracy and generality of the QM treatment, and of the computational efficiency of the MM calculation. 

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