Effective charges of ionic liquid determined self-consistently through combination of molecular dynamics simulation and density-functional theory.

Abstract

A self-consistent scheme combining the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation and density functional theory (DFT) was recently proposed to incorporate the effects of the charge transfer and polarization of ions into non-poralizable force fields of ionic liquids for improved description of energetics and dynamics. The purpose of the present work is to analyze the detailed setups of the MD/DFT scheme by focusing on how the basis set, exchange-correlation (XC) functional, charge-fitting method or force field for the intramolecular and Lennard-Jones interactions affects the MD/DFT results of 1,3-dimethylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl) imide ( [C1mim][NTf2]) and 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium glycinate ( [C2mim][Gly]). It was found that the double-zeta valence polarized or larger size of basis set is required for the convergence of the effective charge of the ion. The choice of the XC functional was further not influential as far as the generalized gradient approximation is used. The charge-fitting method and force field govern the accuracy of the MD/DFT scheme, on the other hand. We examined the charge-fitting methods of Blöchl, the iterative Hirshfeld (Hirshfeld-I), and REPEAT in combination with Lopes et al.'s force field and general AMBER force field. There is no single combination of charge fitting and force field that provides good agreements with the experiments, while the MD/DFT scheme reduces the effective charges of the ions and leads to better description of energetics and dynamics compared to the original force field with unit charges. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.