To Polarize or Not to Polarize? Charge-on-Spring versus KBFF Models for Water and Methanol Bulk and Vapor–Liquid Interfacial Mixtures

Simulations of water and methanol mixtures using polarizable force fields (FFs) for methanol (COS/M and CPC) and water (COS/G2) were performed and compared to experiment and also to a nonpolarizable methanol (KBFF) model with SPC/E water in an effort to quantify the importance of explicit electronic polarization effects in bulk liquid mixtures and vapor–liquid interfaces. The bulk liquid mixture properties studied included the center of mass radial distribution functions, Kirkwood–Buff integrals (KBIs), volumetric properties, isothermal compressibility, enthalpy of mixing, dielectric constant, and diffusion coefficients. The vapor–liquid interface properties investigated included the relative surface probability distributions, surface tension, excess surface adsorption, preferred surface molecule orientations, and the surface dipole. None of the three FFs tested here was clearly superior for all of the properties examined. All the force fields typically reproduced the correct trends with composition for both the bulk and interfacial system properties; the differences between the force fields were primarily quantitative. The overall results suggest that the polarizable FFs are not, at the present stage of development, inherently better able to reproduce the studied bulk and interfacial propertiesdespite the added degree of explicit transferability that is, by definition, built into the polarizable models. Indeed, the specific parametrization of the FF appears to be just as important as the class of FF.