Crystal Structure Prediction and Isostructurality of Three Small Molecules

Abstract

A crystal structure prediction (CSP) study of three small, rigid and structurally related organic compounds (differing only in the position and number of methyl groups) is presented. A tailor-made force field (TMFF; a non-transferable force field specific for each molecule) was constructed with the aid of a dispersion-corrected density functional theory method (the hybrid method). Parameters for all energy terms in each TMFF were fitted to reference data generated by the hybrid method. Each force field was then employed during structure generation. The experimentally observed crystal structures of two of the three molecules were found as the most stable crystal packings in the lists of their force-field-optimised structures. A number of the most stable crystal structures were re-optimised with the hybrid method. One experimental crystal structure was still calculated to be the most stable structure, whereas for another compound the experimental structure became the third most stable structure according to the hybrid method. For the third molecule, the experimentally observed polymorph, which was found to be the fourth most stable form using its TMFF, became the second most stable form. Good geometrical agreements were observed between the experimental structures and those calculated by both methods. The average structural deviation achieved by the TMFFs was almost twice that obtained with the hybrid method. The TMFF approach was extended by exploring the accuracy of a more general TMFF (GTMFF), which involved fitting the force-field parameters to the reference data for all three molecules simultaneously. This GTMFF was slightly less accurate than the individual TMFFs but still of sufficient accuracy to be used in CSP. A study of the isostructural relationships between these molecules and their crystal lattices revealed a potential polymorph of one of the compounds that has not been observed experimentally and that may be accessible in a thorough polymorph screen, through seeding, or through the use of a suitable tailor-made additive.