Small Molecule Thermochemistry: A Tool for Empirical Force Field Development

Spectroscopic analysis of compounds is typically combined with density functional theory, for instance, for assigning vibrational frequencies, limiting application to relatively small compounds. Accurate classical force fields could, in principle, complement these quantum-chemical tools. A relatively simple way to validate vibrational frequencies is by computing thermochemical properties. We present such a validation for over 1800 small molecules using the harmonic approximation. Two popular empirical force fields (GAFF and CGenFF) are compared to experimental data and results from Gaussian-4 quantum-chemical calculations. Frequency scaling factors of 1.035 (CGenFF) and 1.018 (GAFF) are derived from the zero-point energies. The force field calculations have larger deviation from experiment than the G4 method for standard entropy, but for heat capacity the results are comparable. For internal thermal energy and zero-point energy the deviations from G4 are relatively small. The work suggests that with some tuning force fields could indeed complement DFT in spectroscopical applications.