Molecular potentials short-range forces

In Chapter 2 the curve of Fig. 7 was introduced, to show the mutual potential energy arising from short-range forces in contrast to that arising from long-range electrostatic forces. To account for the existence of molecules and molecular ions in solution, we need the same curve with the scale of ordinates reduced so as to be comparable with those of Fig. 

In the field of intermolecular forces a book has been published by Kaplan241 which provides a coverage of the theory from long-range forces (including retardation effects) to short-range forces and nonadditivity. The determination of molecular potentials from experimental data is also considered in one chapter of this book. 

This result appears here as a trivial consequence of the additivity of the Coulomb potential functions. But throughout it is not so obvious, which can be seen from the fact that for the short range forces the additivity is not valid even in first order, even though the Coulomb function is the point of departure. There we have a rather complicated superposition mechanism, which even expresses the saturation of the chemical binding, namely the fact that very different expressions of force take place between the atoms, depending on whether one of them has entered in a chemical force involvement with a third atom. In this respect the molecular forces are quite distinct from the homo-polar valence forces. In first order it can be shown that the forces between atomic systems are not susceptible to the presence of a third [atom] only in the exceptional case where no free valencies are present. We see that in this case the theorem is abo valid for the long range forces of second order. In third order we have no additivity in any case. 

In a classical simulation a force-field has to be provided. Experience with molecular liquids shows that surprisingly good results can be obtained with intermolecular potentials based on site-site short-range interactions and a number of charged sites... 

The molecular approach, adopted throughout this book, starts from the statistical mechanical formulation of the problem. The interaction free energies are identified as correlation functions in the probability sense. As such, there is no reason to assume that these correlations are either short-range or additive. The main difference between direct and indirect correlations is that the former depend only on the interactions between the ligands. The latter depend on the maimer in which ligands affect the partition function of the adsorbent molecule (and, in general, of the solvent as well). The argument is essentially the same as that for the difference between the intermolecular potential and the potential of the mean force in liquids. 

The force fields used in the QM/MM methods are typically adopted from fully classical force fields. While this is in general suitable for the solvent-solvent interactions it is not clear how to model, e.g., the van der Waals interaction between the solute and the solvent. The van der Waals interactions are typically treated as Lennard-Jones (LJ) potentials with parameters for the quantum atoms taken from the classical force field or optimized for the particular QM/MM method for some molecular complexes. However, it is not certain that optimizing the (dispersion and short-range repulsion) parameters on small complexes will improve the results in a QM/MM simulation of liquids [37],... 

Physisorption or physical adsorption is the mechanism by which hydrogen is stored in the molecular form, that is, without dissociating, on the surface of a solid material. Responsible for the molecular adsorption of H2 are weak dispersive forces, called van der Waals forces, between the gas molecules and the atoms on the surface of the solid. These intermolecular forces derive from the interaction between temporary dipoles which are formed due to the fluctuations in the charge distribution in molecules and atoms. The combination of attractive van der Waals forces and short range repulsive interactions between a gas molecule and an atom on the surface of the adsorbent results in a potential energy curve which can be well described by the Lennard-Jones Eq. (2.1). 

Interpreting bulk properties qualitatively on the basis of microscopic properties requires only consideration of the long-range attractive forces and short-range repulsive forces between molecules it is not necessary to take into account the details of molecular shapes. We have already shown one kind of potential that describes these intermolecular forces, the Lennard-Jones 6-12 potential used in Section 9.7 to obtain corrections to the ideal gas law. In Section 10.2, we discuss a variety of intermolecular forces, most of which are derived from electrostatic (Coulomb) interactions, but which are expressed as a hierarchy of approximations to exact electrostatic calculations for these complex systems. 

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