A NEW STRATEGY FOR THE EVALUATION OF FORCE PARAMETERS FROM QUANTUM-MECHANICAL COMPUTATIONS

A new strategy for the determination of force parameters is presented. The equilibrium values appearing in the force field equations representing the "stretching" and "bending" of bonds are directly determined from quantum mechanical calculations without geometrical restrictions. The determination of the force parameters is carried out by means of a rigorous fitting between the quantum mechanic and the molecular mechanical energy variations arising from the perturbation of the geometric variables. The strategy presented here has been incorporated into a computer program named PAPQMD, which was developed in order to provide non-quantum mechanical experts with a powerful tool for the determination of approximate force parameters. The program was developed upon the assumption that force parameters are not universal, but they strongly depend on the molecular environment. This implies that the parameterization procedure should be done in a molecular model close to the molecule or molecules to be studied by means of molecular mechanical or dynamic methods, and consequently, it is no longer supposed that the variation of one geometrical parameter does not affect the rest of the molecular geometry. PAPQMD performs the fitting between molecular mechanics and quantum mechanical energies considering all the perturbations that the modification in one geometric variable causes in all the others, enabling the parametrization even of large molecules. The ability of our method to reproduce experimentally derived force parameters is discussed and compared with the widely used Hopfinger's strategy. The study of the behavior of PAPQMD and Hopfinger's strategies for reproducing the force parameters of two complex molecules demonstrates the superiority of the methodology presented here.