Calculation of Transport Parameters Using ab initio and AMOEBA Polarizable Force Field Methods

The transport properties of chemical species such as coefficients of diffusion, thermal conductivity, and viscosity have been widely used in combustion modeling. Lennard-Jones parameters fitted from the accurate intermolecular potential energy surfaces are crucial to obtain such information. Hence, a fast and accurate energy function is always desired for this purpose. In this study, the quality of a widely used polarizable force field AMOEBA was examined for the interaction between noble gases and n-alkanes. First, the intermolecular energy was compared between AMOEBA, MP2/CBS, MP2/aug’-cc-pVDZ, and QCISD­(T)/CBS. The root mean squared error of the original AMOEBA was 10.31 cm–1 against QCISD­(T)/CBS for all conformations. This was comparable with the errors of 10.84 and 7.75 cm–1 for MP2/aug’-cc-pVDZ and MP2/CBS, respectively. Further optimizing the van der Waals parameters of noble gases, the error of the force field against QCISD­(T)/CBS was reduced to 6.24 cm–1, even better than the MP2/CBS results. Based on the optimized force field parameters, the intermolecular Lennard-Jones parameters were derived using the spherically averaged method and one-dimensional minimization method for a set of (n-alkanes, noble gases) pairs. The discrepancy of the one-dimensional minimization predicted Lennard-Jones collision rates from the tabulated values was typically within 10%, while it could be as large as 20–30% for the spherically averaged method. Additionally, the binary diffusion coefficients were calculated using the present Lennard-Jones parameters. In this case, the parameters derived from the spherically averaged method perform better. The mean unsigned error of the diffusion coefficients is usually within 5%, which is in good agreement with the experimental results. The results demonstrate that the AMOEBA force field can be used to generate the transport parameters systematically.