Density Functional Theory Study on the Interactions of Metal Ions with Long Chain Deprotonated Carboxylic Acids

In this work, interactions between carboxylate ions and calcium or sodium ions are investigated via density functional theory (DFT). Despite the ubiquitous presence of these interactions in natural and industrial chemical processes, few DFT studies on these systems exist in the literature. Special focus has been placed on determining the influence of the multibody interactions (with up to 4 carboxylates and one metal ion) on an effective pair-interaction potential, such as those used in molecular mechanics (MM). Specifically, DFT calculations are employed to quantify an effective pair-potential that implicitly includes multibody interactions to construct potential energy curves for carboxylate–metal ion pairs. The DFT calculated potential curves are compared to a widely used molecular mechanics force field (OPLS-AA). The calculations indicate that multibody effects do influence the energetic behavior of these ionic pairs and the extent of this influence is determined by a balance between (a) charge transfer from the carboxylate to the metal ions which stabilizes the complex and (b) repulsion between carboxylates, which destabilizes the complex. Additionally, the potential curves of the complexes with 1 and 2 carboxylates and one counterion have been examined to higher separation distance (20 Å) by the use of relaxed scan optimization and constrained density functional theory (CDFT). The results from the relaxed scan optimization indicate that near the equilibrium distance, the charge transfer between the metal ion and the deprotonated carboxylic acid group is significant and leads to non-negligible differences between the DFT and MM potential curves, especially for calcium. However, at longer separation distances the MM calculated interaction potential functions converge to those calculated with CDFT, effectively indicating the approximate domain of the separation distance coordinate where charge transfer between the ions is occurring.