Anesthetic molecules embedded in a lipid membrane: a computer simulation study.

The effect of four general anesthetic molecules, i.e., chloroform, halothane, diethyl ether and enflurane, on the properties of a fully hydrated dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) membrane is studied in detail by long molecular dynamics simulations. Furthermore, to address the problem of pressure reversal, the effect of pressure on the anesthetic containing membranes is also investigated. In order to ensure sufficient equilibration and adequate sampling, the simulations performed have been at least an order of magnitude longer than the studies reported previously in the literature on general anesthetics. The results obtained can help in resolving several long-standing contradictions concerning the effect of anesthetics, some of which were the consequence of too short simulation time used in several previous studies. More importantly, a number of seeming contradictions are found to originate from the fact that different anesthetic molecules affect the membrane structure differently in several respects. In particular, halothane, being able to weakly hydrogen bound to the ester group of the lipid tails, is found to behave in a markedly different way than the other three molecules considered. Besides, we also found that two changes, namely lateral expansion of the membrane and increasing local disorder in the lipid tails next to the anesthetic molecules, are clearly induced by all four anesthetic molecules tested here in the same way, and both of these effects are reverted by the increase in pressure.

The ice-vapor interface and the melting point of ice I(h) for the polarizable POL3 water model.

We use molecular dynamics simulations to determine the melting point of ice I(h) for the polarizable POL3 water force field (Dang, L. X. J. Chem. Phys.1992, 97, 2659). Simulations are performed on a slab of ice I(h) with two free surfaces at several different temperatures. The analysis of the time evolution of the total energy in the course of the simulations at the set of temperatures yields the melting point of the POL3 model to be T(m) = 180 ± 10 K. Moreover, the results of the simulations show that the degree of hydrogen-bond disorder occurring in the bulk of POL3 ice is larger (at the corresponding degree of undercooling) than in ice modeled by nonpolarizable water models. These results demonstrate that the POL3 water force field is rather a poor model for studying ice and ice-liquid or ice-vapor interfaces. While a number of polarizable water models have been developed over the past years, little is known about their performance in simulations of supercooled water and ice. This study thus highlights the need for testing of the existing polarizable water models over a broad range of temperatures, pressures, and phases, and developing a new polarizable water force field, reliable over larger areas of the phase diagram.

Water adsorption isotherms on porous onionlike carbonaceous particles. Simulations with the grand canonical Monte Carlo method.

The grand canonical Monte Carlo method is used to simulate the adsorption isotherms of water molecules on different types of model soot particles. These soot models are constructed by first removing atoms from onion-fullerene structures in order to create randomly distributed pores inside the soot, and then performing molecular dynamics simulations, based on the reactive adaptive intermolecular reactive empirical bond order (AIREBO) description of the interaction between carbon atoms, to optimize the resulting structures. The obtained results clearly show that the main driving force of water adsorption on soot is the possibility of the formation of new water-water hydrogen bonds with the already adsorbed water molecules. The shape of the calculated water adsorption isotherms at 298 K strongly depends on the possible confinement of the water molecules in pores of the carbonaceous structure. We found that there are two important factors influencing the adsorption ability of soot. The first of these factors, dominating at low pressures, is the ability of the soot of accommodating the first adsorbed water molecules at strongly hydrophilic sites. The second factor concerns the size and shape of the pores, which should be such that the hydrogen bonding network of the water molecules filling them should be optimal. This second factor determines the adsorption properties at higher pressures.

Adsorption of benzaldehyde at the surface of ice, studied by experimental method and computer simulation.

Adsorption study of benzaldehyde on ice surfaces is performed by combining experimental and theoretical approaches. The experiments are conducted over the temperature range 233-253 K using a coated wall flow tube coupled to a mass spectrometric detector. Besides the experimental way, the adsorption isotherm is also determined by performing a set of grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations at 233 K. The experimental and calculated adsorption isotherms show a very good agreement within the corresponding errors. Besides, both experimental and theoretical studies permit us to derive the enthalpy of adsorption of benzaldehyde on ice surfaces DeltaH(ads), which are in excellent agreement: DeltaH(ads) = -61.4 +/- 9.7 kJ/mol (experimental) and DeltaH(ads) = -59.4 +/- 5.1 kJ/mol (simulation). The obtained results indicate a much stronger ability of benzaldehyde of being adsorbed at the surface of ice than that of small aliphatic aldehydes, such as formaldehyde or acetaldehyde. At low surface coverages the adsorbed molecules exclusively lie parallel with the ice surface. With increasing surface coverage, however, the increasing competition of the adsorbed molecules for the surface area to be occupied leads to the appearance of two different perpendicular orientations relative to the surface. In the first orientation, the benzaldehyde molecule turns its aldehyde group toward the ice phase, and, similarly to the molecules in the lying orientation, forms a hydrogen bond with a surface water molecule. In the other perpendicular orientation the aldehyde group turns to the vapor phase, and its O atom interacts with the delocalized pi system of the benzene ring of a nearby lying benzaldehyde molecule of the second molecular layer. In accordance with this observed scenario, the saturated adsorption layer, being stable in a roughly 1 kJ/mol broad range of chemical potentials, contains, besides the first molecular layer, also traces of the second molecular layer of adsorbed benzaldehyde.

Adsorption of water molecules on partially oxidized graphite surfaces: a molecular dynamics study of the competition between OH and COOH sites.

In this paper, molecular dynamic simulations are used to study the adsorption of water molecules on partially oxidized graphite surfaces containing COOH and OH sites. More specially, the competition between the OH and COOH sites with respect to water adsorption is characterized at three different temperatures (200, 250 and 300 K). The simulations show a strong preferential clustering of the water molecules around the COOH sites irrespective of the temperature. The present results also show that the OH sites can influence the water adsorption process at high temperature, if their local density on the surface is sufficiently large. In this situation, the dynamics of the adsorption process is shown to depend on the distribution of these OH sites on the surface. These results give insights into the water adsorption mechanisms on oxidized graphite surfaces constituting, for example, black carbons or soot particles emitted by aircraft.

Investigation of the adsorption behaviour of acetone at the surface of ice. A grand canonical Monte Carlo simulation study.

The adsorption isotherm of acetone at the surface of I(h) ice has been determined by a set of grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations at 200 K, by varying the chemical potential of acetone in the simulations. The obtained isotherm can be described by the Langmuir theory up to a certain relative pressure value (i.e., about 0.07); above which the isotherm increasingly deviates from the Langmuir form. This deviation mainly originates from the increasing importance of the lateral dipolar interactions. Further, above this pressure the adsorption sites are no longer equivalent: the adsorbed acetone molecules are aligned in three different ways. In one of these orientations the acetone molecule forms two, while in another one it forms one hydrogen bond with the surface waters, whereas in the third preferred orientation no hydrogen bonding occurs between the adsorbed molecule and the ice surface.

Determination of the adsorption isotherm of methanol on the surface of ice. An experimental and grand canonical Monte Carlo simulation study.

The adsorption isotherm of methanol on ice at 200 K has been determined both experimentally and by using the Grand Canonical Monte Carlo computer simulation method. The experimental and simulated isotherms agree well with each other; their deviations can be explained by a small (about 5 K) temperature shift in the simulation data and, possibly, by the non-ideality of the ice surface in the experimental situation. The analysis of the results has revealed that the saturated adsorption layer is monomolecular. At low surface coverage, the adsorption is driven by the methanol-ice interaction; however, at full coverage, methanol-methanol interactions become equally important. Under these conditions, about half of the adsorbed methanol molecules have one hydrogen-bonded water neighbor, and the other half have two hydrogen-bonded water neighbors. The vast majority of the methanols have a hydrogen-bonded methanol neighbor, as well.

Molecular dynamics simulation study of water adsorption on hydroxylated graphite surfaces.

In this paper, we present results from molecular dynamic simulations devoted to the characterization of the interaction between water molecules and hydroxylated graphite surfaces considered as models for surfaces of soot emitted by aircraft. The hydroxylated graphite surfaces are modeled by anchoring several OH groups on an infinite graphite plane. The molecular dynamics simulations are based on a classical potential issued from quantum chemical calculations. They are performed at three temperatures (100, 200, and 250 K) to provide a view of the structure and dynamics of water clusters on the model soot surface. These simulations show that the water-OH sites interaction is quite weak compared to the water-water interaction. This leads to the clustering of the water molecules above the surface, and the corresponding water aggregate can only be trapped by the OH sites when the temperature is sufficiently low, or when the density of OH sites is sufficiently high.