Terahertz Absorption Spectra Simulation of Glutamine Based on Quantum-Chemical Calculation

Abstract

With simulation of absorption spectra in THz region based on quantum-chemical calculation, the THz absorption features of target materials can be assigned with theoretical normal vibration modes. This is necessary for deeply understanding the origin of THz absorption spectra. The reliabilities of simulation results mainly depend on the initial structures and theoretical methods used throughout the calculation. In our study, we utilized THz-TDS to obtain the THz absorption spectrum of solid-state L-glutamine. Then three quantum-chemical calculation schemes with different initial structures commonly used in previous studies were proposed to study the inter-molecular interactions' contribution to the THz absorption of glutamine, containing monomer structure, dimer structure and crystal unit cell structure. After structure optimization and vibration modes' calculation based on density functional theory, the calculation results were converted to absorption spectra by Lorentzian line shape function for visual comparison with experimental spectra. The result of dimmer structure is better than monomer structure in number of absorption features while worse than crystal unit cell structure in position of absorption peaks. With the most reliable simulation result from crystal unit cell calculation, we successfully assigned all three experimental absorption peaks of glutamine ranged from 0.3 to 2.6 THz with overall vibration modes. Our study reveals that the crystal unit cell should be used as initial structure during theoretical simulation of solid-state samples' THz absorption spectrum which comprehensively considers not only the intra-molecular interactions but also inter-molecular interactions.