New estimations of vapor density and surface tension of water at low temperatures using scaled model

Molecular Dynamics Study on the Heat of Phase Transition of Chloroacetate from the Bulk to the Surface Phases

Based on the surface adsorption theory developed in our group and molecular dynamics simulations, the adsorption behaviors of methyl chloroacetate, ethyl chloroacetate, propyl chloroacetate, methyl dichloroacetate, and methyl trichloroacetate at the vapor-liquid interface have been thoroughly investigated. The surface layer thickness of these five liquids shows a significant increase as temperature increases, but it decreases significantly with the increase of intermolecular interactions of chloroacetates. It is found with our surface adsorption theory that the reversible heat of phase transition for chloroacetates from bulk phase to surface phase increases from methyl chloroacetate to propyl chloroacetate with the alkyl chain and also increases from methyl chloroacetate to methyl trichloroacetate as the number of chloro group increases. Molecular dynamics simulation is exploited to calculate the entropies of these five liquids in the surface and bulk regions at various temperatures. The variation trends of the simulated results are consistent with those of the phase transition heats determined with our surface adsorption theory.

Free-energy differences of OPC-Water and SPC/HW-Heavy-Water Models using the Bennett Acceptance Ratio

Surface tension, vapor density of OPC-water and SPC/HW-heavy-water models have been estimated at low temperatures using the scaled model. The free-energy difference, -ΔF, of n-molecules and (n-1)-molecules plus a free probe has been calculated using the Bennett acceptance ratio with the aid of Monte-Carlo simulations. Our results show that the relation between the free-energy difference divided by kBT and the number of molecules to the power minus one-third is linear for n>6. Consequently, the surface tension can be extracted from the straight line slope, whereas the vapor density can be extracted from the intercept, which is proportional to the logarithmic ratio of liquid density to that of vapor density. By scaling the free-energy differences, for at least three different temperatures, to TCT−1, we estimated the critical temperature and hence the surface tension and the vapor density at a wide range of temperatures. The free-energy differences have been calculated at 240K, 260K, and 280K for OPC-water, and at 260K, 280K, and 300K for the SPC/HW-heavy water model.

Molecular modeling of aqueous electrolytes at interfaces: Effects of long-range dispersion forces and of ionic charge rescaling

Molecular dynamics simulations of aqueous electrolytes generally rely on empirical force fields, combining dispersion interactions-described by a truncated Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential-and electrostatic interactions-described by a Coulomb potential computed with a long-range solver. Recently, force fields using rescaled ionic charges [electronic continuum correction (ECC)], possibly complemented with rescaling of LJ parameters [ECC rescaled (ECCR)], have shown promising results in bulk, but their performance at interfaces has been less explored. Here, we started by exploring the impact of the LJ potential truncation on the surface tension of a sodium chloride aqueous solution. We show a discrepancy between the numerical predictions for truncated LJ interactions with a large cutoff and for untruncated LJ interactions computed with a long-range solver, which can bias comparison of force field predictions with experiments. Using a long-range solver for LJ interactions, we then show that an ionic charge rescaling factor chosen to correct long-range electrostatic interactions in bulk accurately describes image charge repulsion at the liquid-vapor interface, and the rescaling of LJ parameters in ECCR models-aimed at capturing local ion-ion and ion-water interactions in bulk- describes well the formation of an ionic double layer at the liquid-vapor interface. Overall, these results suggest that the molecular modeling of aqueous electrolytes at interfaces would benefit from using long-range solvers for dispersion forces and from using ECCR models, where the charge rescaling factor should be chosen to correct long-range electrostatic interactions.

Critical temperature, surface tension and vapor density estimations of methanol using the scaled model

In the present work, we applied scaled model to calculate surface tension, vapor densities and the critical temperatures of four different models of methanol: namely, H1, J1, J2 and L1 models. The scaled model is based on calculating the free energy of the system. Free energy calculations were performed by applying the Bennet acceptance ratio (BAR) using Monte-Carlo simulations at low temperature range of 220K-280K. The BAR is based on calculating the free energy difference of n-molecules and (n-1)-molecules plus a free probe on methanol. Estimations of vapor densities are based on extrapolating the intercept of the scaled free energy linear line as number of molecules approaches infinity, which requires a pre-known values for liquid densities. To accomplish this, a series of molecular dynamic simulations were performed at low temperature range of 200K-300K with steps of 10K. All the estimated properties were in excellent agreement with experimental published data.