Supermolecule-polarizable continuum model approach

The acid-catalysed, neutral, and base-catalysed hydrolysis of seven lactones was studied using a hybrid supermolecule polarizable continuum model (PCM) approach including six explicit water molecules. DFT and ab initio methods were used to analyse the features of the various possible hydrolysis mechanisms of -propiolactone, j0-butyrolactone, j0-isovalerolactone, diketene, y-butyrolactone, 2(5//)-furanone, and... 

TD-DFT) they calculated the transition energies and dipole moments for NMA both in vacuum and in an aqueous solution. Moreover, in the treatment of the solvent they compared two different approaches, i.e., a polarizable-continuum method (COSMO) and a supermolecule approach. For the latter, the authors performed molecular-dynamics calculations using a force-field model and, subsequently, extracted a cluster containing the solute and 3 water molecules that form hydrogen bonds to the solute. Averages over 90 such configurations were ultimately determined. 

The effect of the solvent is usually modelled either by the use of the Onsager s self consistent reaction field (SCRF) [20] or by the polarizable continuum method (PCM) [21]. With regard to the relative stability of cytosine tautomers in aqueous solution, these methods provided results [14,15] which, in spite of some discrepancies, are in reasonable agreement with experimental data [3]. However, continuum-based methods do not explicitly take into consideration the local solvent-solute interaction which is instead important in the description of the proton transfer mechanism in hydrogen-bonded systems. A reasonable approach to the problem was recently proposed [22,23] in which the molecule of interest and few solvent molecules are treated as a supermolecule acting as solute, while the bulk of the solvent is represented as a polarizable dielectric. 

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