Distinction and Quantification of Noncovalent Dispersive and Hydrophobic Effects

The possibilities of comparing computational results of noncovalent interactions with experimental data are discussed, first with respect to intramolecular interactions. For these a variety of experimental data such as heats of formation, crystal sublimation heats, comparison with energy minimized structures, and spectroscopic data are available, but until now largely have not found widespread application. Early force field and QM/MP2 calculations have already shown that the sublimation heats of hydrocarbons can be predicted with an accuracy of ±1%. Intermolecular interactions in solution or the gas phase are always accompanied by difficult to compute entropic contributions, like all associations between molecules. Experimentally observed T∆S values contribute 10% to 80% of the total ∆G, depending on interaction mechanisms within the complexes, such as, e.g., hydrogen bonding and ion pairing. Free energies ∆G derived from equilibrium measurements in solution allow us to define binding increments ∆∆G, which are additive and transferable to a variety of supramolecular complexes. Data from more than 90 equilibrium measurements of porphyrin receptors in water indicate that small alkanes do not bind to the hydrophobic flat surfaces within a measuring limit of ∆G = ±0.5 kJ/mol, and that 20 functions bearing heteroatoms show associations by dispersive interactions with up to ∆G = 8 kJ/mol, roughly as a function of their polarizability. Aromatic systems display size-dependent affinities ∆G as a linear function of the number of π-electrons.

Collagen Fiber-Based Advanced Separation Materials: Recent Developments and Future Perspectives

Separation plays a critical role in a broad range of industrial applications. Developing advanced separation materials is of great significance for the future development of separation technology. Collagen fibers (CFs), the typical structural proteins, exhibit unique structural hierarchy, amphiphilic wettability, and versatile chemical reactivity. These distinctive properties provide infinite possibilities for the rational design of advanced separation materials. During the past 2 decades, many progressive achievements in the development of CFs-derived advanced separation materials have been witnessed already. Herein, the CFs-based separation materials are focused on and the recent progresses in this topic are reviewed. CFs widely existing in animal skins display unique hierarchically fibrous structure, amphiphilicity-enabled surface wetting behaviors, multi-functionality guaranteed covalent/non-covalent reaction versatility. These outstanding merits of CFs bring great opportunities for realizing rational design of a variety of advanced separation materials that were capable of achieving high-performance separations to diverse specific targets, including oily pollutants, natural products, metal ions, anionic contaminants and proteins, etc. Besides, the important issues for the further development of CFs-based advanced separation materials are also discussed.

Sublimation Study of Six 5-Substituted-1,10-phenanthrolines by Knudsen Effusion Mass Loss and Solution Calorimetry

The vapor pressures of six solid 5-X-1,10-phenanthrolines (where X = Cl, CH₃, CN, OCH₃, NH₂, NO₂) were determined in suitable temperature ranges by Knudsen Effusion Mass Loss (KEML). From the temperature dependencies of vapor pressure, the molar sublimation enthalpies, Δ_cr^gH_m⁰(⟨T⟩), were calculated at the corresponding average ⟨T⟩ of the explored temperature ranges. Since to the best of our knowledge no thermochemical data seem to be available in the literature regarding these compounds, the Δ_cr^gH_m⁰(⟨T⟩) values obtained by KEML experiments were adjusted to 298.15 K using a well known empirical procedure reported in the literature. The standard (p⁰ = 0.1 MPa) molar sublimation enthalpies, Δ_cr^gH_m⁰(298.15 K), were compared with those determined using a recently proposed solution calorimetry approach, which was validated using a remarkable amount of thermochemical data of molecular compounds. For this purpose, solution enthalpies at infinite dilution of the studied 5-chloro and 5-methylphenantrolines in benzene were measured at 298.15 K. Good agreement was found between the values derived by the two different approaches, and final mean values of Δ_cr^gH_m⁰(298.15 K) were recommended. Finally, the standard molar entropies and Gibbs energies of sublimation were also derived at T = 298.15 K. The volatilities of the six compounds were found to vary over a range of three orders of magnitude in the explored temperature range. The large difference in volatility was analyzed in the light of enthalpies and entropies of sublimation. The latter was tentatively put in relation to the rotational contribution of the substituent group on the phenanthroline unit.

Transferable force field for crystal structure predictions, investigation of performance and exploration of different rescoring strategies using DFT-D methods

A new force field, here called AZ-FF, aimed at being used for crystal structure predictions, has been developed. The force field is transferable to a new type of chemistry without additional training or modifications. This makes the force field very useful in the prediction of crystal structures of new drug molecules since the time-consuming step of developing a new force field for each new molecule is circumvented. The accuracy of the force field was tested on a set of 40 drug-like molecules and found to be very good where observed crystal structures are found at the top of the ranked list of tentative crystal structures. Re-ranking with dispersion-corrected density functional theory (DFT-D) methods further improves the scoring. After DFT-D geometry optimization the observed crystal structure is found at the leading top of the ranking list. DFT-D methods and force field methods have been evaluated for use in predicting properties such as phase transitions upon heating, mechanical properties or intrinsic crystalline solubility. The utility of using crystal structure predictions and the associated material properties in risk assessment in connection with form selection in the drug development process is discussed.