Solvatochromic shifts of polar and non-polar molecules in ambient and supercritical water: A sequential quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics study including solute-solvent electron exchange-correlation

Abstract

Polar and non-polar solutes (acetone and benzene) dissolved in ambient water and supercritical water are investigated theoretically using a sequential quantum mechanics (QM)/molecular mechanics (MM) method which combines classical molecular dynamics simulations and QM/MM calculations. From the detailed analysis of the dependence of the QM region size and point charge background region size as well as the different functionals, it is found that the inclusion of the solvent molecules within the first solvation shell into the QM region to account for the exchange-correlation between a solute and neighboring solvent molecules is important for the highly accurate spectral shift calculations, especially vital for the non-polar solutes whose interactions with the solvents are dominated by the quantum dispersions. At the same time, sufficiently large surrounding partial charge region (r(cutoff) ≥15 Å) as well as the functional corrections to describe the long-range dispersion-corrections are also essential for the study of the electronic excited states in condensed phase. Our calculated solvatochromic shift values and their density dependencies at ambient and high temperature conditions are found to be in good agreements with experimental observations. This indicates that sound theoretical studies of solvatochromic shift can be achieved provided that a reasonable computational scheme with sufficiently large N(water) (QM) and r(cutoff) values is implemented. We also find both of aqueous acetone and aqueous benzene under high temperatures present three distinctive regions: low-density gas-like region, supercritical region, and high-density liquid-like region. The plateau behavior of solvatochromic shift in the supercritical region can be ascribed to the solvent clustering around the solute, which is a fundamental phenomenon of supercritical fluids (SCFs). The density dependence of our calculated coordination number of the first solvation shell nicely reproduces the trend of spectral shift and verifies the solvent clustering phenomenon of SCFs and its relationship with SCF's physicochemical properties.