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The Charge-Displacement (CD) analysis has proven to be a powerful tool for a quantitative characterization of the electron-density flow occurring upon chemical bonding along a suitably chosen interaction axis. In several classes of interesting intermolecular interactions, however, an interaction axis cannot be straightforwardly defined, and the CD analysis loses consistency and usefulness. In this article, we propose a general, flexible reformulation of the CD analysis capable of providing a quantitative view of the charge displacement along custom curvilinear paths. The new scheme naturally reduces to ordinary CD analysis if the path is chosen to be a straight line. An implementation based on a discrete sampling of the electron densities and a Voronoi space partitioning is described and shown in action on two test cases of a metal-carbonyl and a pyridine-ammonia complex.

A framework for the stochastic description of relaxation processes in flexible macromolecules including dissipative effects has been recently introduced, starting from an atomistic view, describing the joint relaxation of internal coordinates and global degrees of freedom, and depending on parameters recoverable from classic force fields (energetics) and medium modelling at the continuum level (friction tensors). The new approach provides a rational context for the interpretation of magnetic resonance relaxation experiments. In its simplest formulation, the semi-flexible Brownian (SFB) model has been until now shown to reproduce correctly correlation functions and spectral densities related to orientational properties obtained by direct molecular dynamics simulations of peptides. Here, for the first time, we applied directly the SFB approach to the practical evaluation of high-quality 13C nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation parameters, T1 and T2, and the heteronuclear NOE of several oligosaccharides, which were previously interpreted on the basis of refined ad hoc modelling. The calculated NMR relaxation parameters were in agreement with the experimental data, showing that this general approach can be applied to diverse classes of molecular systems, with the minimal usage of adjustable parameters.

An integrated environment for the analysis of chemical bonding based on immersive virtual reality is presented. Using a multiscreen stereoscopic projection system, researchers are cast into the world of atoms and molecules, where they can visualize at a human scale the electron charge rearrangement (computed via state-of-the-art quantum-chemical methods) occurring on bond formation throughout the molecular region. Thanks to specifically designed features, such a virtual laboratory couples the immediacy of an immersive experience with a powerful, recently developed method yielding quantitative, spatially detailed pictures of the several charge flows involved in the formation of a chemical bond. By means of two case studies on organometallic complexes, we show how familiar concepts in coordination chemistry, such as donation and back-donation charge flows, can be effectively identified and quantified to predict experimental observables. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The virtual-reality framework AVATAR (Advanced Virtual Approach to Topological Analysis of Reactivity) for the immersive exploration of potential-energy landscapes is presented. AVATAR is based on modern consumer-grade virtual-reality technology and builds on two key concepts: (a) the reduction of the dimensionality of the potential-energy surface to two process-tailored, physically meaningful generalized coordinates, and (b) the analogy between the evolution of a chemical process and a pathway through valleys (potential wells) and mountain passes (saddle points) of the associated potential energy landscape. Examples including the discovery of competitive reaction paths in simple A + BC collisional systems and the interconversion between conformers in ring-puckering motions of flexible rings highlight the innovation potential that augmented and virtual reality convey for teaching, training, and supporting research in chemistry.

Chemical bonding in a set of six cuprous complexes with simple nitriles (CN−, HNC, HCN, CH3NC, and CH3CN) is investigated by means of a recently devised analysis scheme framed in density-functional theory and quantitatively singling out concurrent charge flows such as σ donation and π backdonation. The results of our analysis are comparatively assessed against qualitative models for charge redistribution based on the popular concepts of octet rule and resonance structures, and the relative importance of different charge-flow channels relating to σ donation, π back-donation, polarization, and hyperconjugation is discussed on a quantitative basis.

Ring-puckering motion in 12 flexible cyclic molecules is investigated by calculation and analysis of two-dimensional potential-energy surfaces (PESs) using the so-called ring-puckering coordinates proposed by Cremer and Pople. The PESs are calculated by means of density-functional theory using a B2PLYP-D3BJ exchange-correlation functional with a maug-cc-pVTZ basis set, and results are compared to the available experimental and theoretical data. Special care is devoted to the aspect of symmetry in such two-dimensional PESs, which are here reported for the first time also for molecules whose planar form has symmetry lower than D5h or C2v. The issue of PES fitting and that of solving the nuclear dynamics using ring-puckering coordinates are also addressed. Analytical formulations of the computed PESs using suitable functional forms with a limited set of parameters are provided.

We discuss the design and implementation of StarRate, a modern-Fortran program for the calculation of chemical kinetics coupled to anharmonic vibrational perturbative treatments. The program is written in the F language, a carefully crafted subset of Fortran 95, and is conceived in an object-based programming paradigm, i.e. the set of object-oriented programming features supported by Fortran 90/95. StarRate is made up of three main modules handling the involved molecular species, the elementary reaction steps, and the whole reaction scheme. Input data are accessed through an XML interface based on a cross-code hierarchical data format granting interoperability with popular electronic-structure packages and with the graphical interface of the Virtual Multifrequency Spectrometer developed in our group. Data parsing is performed through versatile Python scripts. Test calculations on the isomerization reaction of C-cyanomethanimine using anharmonic densities of states obtained with a development version of Gaussian are reported together with an account of ongoing developments.

Predicting the values of the potential energy surface (PES) for a given chemical system is essential to running the associated dynamics and modeling its evolution in time. To the purpose of modeling chemical reactions involving few atoms, this task is usually accomplished by fitting or interpolating a set of energies computed at different nuclear geometries through accurate, though computationally demanding, quantum-chemical calculations. Among the several approaches for choosing an appropriate set of geometries and energies, a new scheme has been recently proposed (Rampino S, J Phys Chem A 120:4683–4692, 2016) which is based on a regular sampling in a space-reduced bond-order (SRBO) domain rather than in the more conventional bond-length (BL) domain. In this work we address the performances of four machine-learning (ML) models, as opposed to pure mathematical fitting or interpolation schemes, in predicting the PES of a three-atom system modeling an atom-diatom exchange reaction when coupled to the SRBO sampling scheme. The models (two ensemble-learning, an automated ML, and a deep-learning one), trained on both SRBO and BL datasets, are shown to perform better than popular fitting or interpolation schemes and to give the best results if coupled to SRBO data.

We discuss the implementation of a computer program for accurate calculation of the kinetics of chemical reactions integrated in the user-friendly, multi-purpose Virtual Multifrequency Spectrometer tool. The program is based on the ab initio modeling of the involved molecular species, the adoption of transition-state theory for each elementary step of the reaction, and the use of a master-equation approach accounting for the complete reaction scheme. Some features of the software are illustrated through examples including the interconversion reaction of hydroxyacetone and 2-hydroxypropanal and the production of HCN and HNC from vinyl cyanide.

Potential energy surfaces (PESs) for use in dynamics calculations of few-atom reactive systems are commonly modeled as functional forms fitting or interpolating a set of ab initio energies computed at many nuclear configurations. An automated procedure is here proposed for optimal configuration-space sampling in generating this set of energies as part of the grid-empowered molecular simulator GEMS (Laganà et al., J. Grid Comput. 2010, 8, 571-586). The scheme is based on a space-reduced formulation of the so-called bond-order variables allowing for a balanced representation of the attractive and repulsive regions of a diatom configuration space. Uniform grids based on space-reduced bond-order variables are proven to outperform those defined on the more conventional bond-length variables in converging the fitted/interpolated PES to the computed ab initio one with increasing number of grid points. Benchmarks are performed on the one- and three-dimensional prototype systems H2 and H3 using both a local-interpolation (modified Shepard) and a global-fitting (Aguado-Paniagua) scheme. Potential energy surfaces (PESs) for use in dynamics calculations of few atom reactive systems are commonly modeled as functional forms fitting or interpolating a set of ab initio energies computed at many nuclear configurations. An automated procedure is here proposed for optimal configuration-space sampling in generating this set of energies as part of the grid-empowered molecular simulator GEMS (Lagana et al., J. Grid Comput. 2010, 8, 571-586). The scheme is based on a space-reduced formulation of the so-called bond-order variables allowing for a balanced representation of the attractive and repulsive regions of a diatom configuration space. Uniform grids based on space-reduced bond-order variables are proven to outperform those defined on the more conventional bond-length variables in converging the fitted/interpolated PES to the computed ab initio one with increasing number of grid points. Benchmarks are performed on the one- and three-dimensional prototype systems H-2 and H-3 using both a local-interpolation (modified Shepard) and a global-fitting (Aguado-Paniagua) scheme.

We have recently introduced a simple yet powerful tool for analyzing quantitatively the coordination bond in terms of the donation and back-donation constituents of the Dewar-Chatt-Duncanson model. Our approach is based on the decomposition, via natural orbitals for chemical valence (NOCV), of the so-called charge-displacement (CD) function into additive chemically meaningful components (Bistoni et al. J. Chem. Phys. 2015, 142, 084112 ). The method, referred to as NOCV/CD, provides clear-cut measures of donation and back-donation charge flows following bond formation, and its robustness has been demonstrated by a tight correlation of the related charge-transfer estimates with experimental observables. In this paper we extend the NOCV/CD analysis scheme to the four-component relativistic framework, which includes spin-orbit coupling variationally. This formalism is incorporated into a recently developed, highly efficient parallel version of the relativistic Dirac-Kohn-Sham (DKS) program BERTHA (Rampino et al. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2014, 10, 3766-3776 ). We test the accuracy and numerical stability of this new implementation through the analysis of the convergence properties of the basis sets employed to expand the DKS spinor solution and those used to linearize the electronic density in the density-fitting algorithm speeding up the evaluation of the DKS matrix. An illustration of NOCV/CD analysis in the relativistic framework is also given through a study of the metal-carbonyl coordination bond in a series of [M-CO]+ (M = Cu, Ag, Au) complexes of group 11 metals, where relativistic effects, including spin-orbit coupling, are found to play an important role.

The Grid Empowered Molecular Simulator GEMS enabling fully ab initio virtual experiments through rigorous theoretical and computational procedures has been upgraded with a novel scheme for automated generation of three-atom potential energy surfaces. The scheme is based on a space-reduced formulation of the so-called bond-order variables allowing for a balanced representation of the attractive and repulsive regions of a diatom configuration space. The deployment and use of the resulting upgraded machinery on distributed and cloud computing infrastructures is also discussed.

We performed a full coordinated run of the Grid-Empowered Molecular Simulator (GEMS) to the end of performing a dynamics investigation of the C (3P0) + CH+(X1σ+) →C2+(X4σg-) + H (2S1/2) reaction of astrochemistry relevance. The GEMS workflow allowed us to manage in a unified fashion the high-level ab initio calculation of the electronic structure of C2H+on an optimal space-reduced bond-order grid, the fitting of an accurate potential energy surface, the integration of quasiclassical dynamics equations for evaluating fully thermal and state-specific rate coefficients as well as more detailed dynamical properties by performing a massively distributed computational campaign of trajectory calculations. In this way we were able to check the validity of the formulation of the rate coefficient of the title reaction in popular astrochemistry databases, the dynamical nature of the temperature dependence of the rate coefficients, and the microscopic foundations of the branching mechanism of the reaction. Moreover, we checked the accuracy of our quasiclassical results against quantum calculations.

Thermal rate coefficients for the astrochemical reaction C + CH$^+$ $\to$ C$_2^+$ + H were computed in the temperature range 20-300 K by using novel rate theory based on ring polymer molecular dynamics (RPMD) on a recently published bond-order based potential energy surface and compared with previous Langevin capture model (LCM) and quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) calculations. Results show that there is a significant discrepancy between the RPMD rate coefficients and the previous theoretical results which can lead to overestimation of the rate coefficients for the title reaction by several orders of magnitude at very low temperatures. We argue that this can be attributed to a very challenging energy profile along the reaction coordinate for the title reaction, not taken into account in extenso by either the LCM or QCT approximation. In the absence of any rigorous quantum mechanical or experimental results, the computed RPMD rate coefficients represent state-of-the-art estimates to be included in astrochemical databases and kinetic networks.

The quantum framework of the Grid Empowered Molecular Simulator GEMS has been assembled on the segment of the European Grid devoted to the Computational Chemistry Virtual Organization. The related grid based workflow allows the ab initio evaluation of the dynamics of small systems starting from the calculation of the electronic properties. Interoperability between computational codes across the different stages of the workflow was made possible by the use of the common data formats Q5Cost and D5Cost. Illustrative benchmark runs have been performed on the prototype H + H 2, N + N 2 and O + O 2 gas phase exchange reactions and thermal rate coefficients have been calculated for the last two. Results are discussed in terms of the modeling of the interaction and advantages of using the Grid is highlighted. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Code interoperability and the search for domain-specific standard data formats represent critical issues in many areas of computational science. The advent of novel computing infrastructures such as computational grids and clouds make these issues even more urgent. The design and implementation of a common data format for quantum chemistry (QC) and quantum dynamics (QD) computer programs is discussed with reference to the research performed in the course of two Collaboration in Science and Technology Actions. The specific data models adopted, Q5Cost and D5Cost, are shown to work for a number of interoperating codes, regardless of the type and amount of information (small or large datasets) to be exchanged. The codes are either interfaced directly, or transfer data by means of wrappers; both types of data exchange are supported by the Q5/D5Cost library. Further, the exchange of data between QC and QD codes is addressed. As a proof of concept, the H + H2 reaction is discussed. The proposed scheme is shown to provide an excellent basis for cooperative code development, even across domain boundaries. Moreover, the scheme presented is found to be useful also as a production tool in the grid distributed computing environment. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.