An extended version of Boyd's force field method applicable to heteroatomic molecules: Part 1. Adenine and uracil

Abstract

The force field method developed by Boyd is extended to include molecules containing atoms other than C and H (e.g., N, O, P, S, Cl, Br,…). A new set of force field parameters is determined in order to redefine the potential energy functions that govern the dynamics of the internal (valence coordinates) degrees of freedom of a molecule. It is shown that the minimum of the partial potential energy surface is significantly affected by electrostatic intramolecular interactions. In this regard the non-bonded interactions appears to be less important than the dipole-dipole type interactions for a given interatomic distance when heteroatoms are present in the molecular framework. The reliability of the extended method as regards minimized structure, vibrational spectra and thermodynamic properties has been checked for more than 20 polyatomic molecules. From the correlation between calculated and experimental properties it is concluded that the method has good potential for further applications on polyatomic molecules with increasing size and topological compexities such as adenine and uracil.