Accurate molecular electrostatic potentials based on modified PRDDO/M wave functions. I. Electrostatic potential derived atomic charges

A new approach for the calculation of electrostatic potential derived atomic charges is presented. Based on molecular orbital calculations in the PRDDO/M approximation, the new parametrized electrostatic potential (PESP) method is parametrized against ab initio MP2/6-31G** calculations. For a data set of 820 atoms in 145 molecules containing H, C, N. O, F, P, S, Cl, and Br (including hypervalent species), the PESP method achieves a mean absolute error of 0.037 e⁻ with a correlation coefficient of 0.990. Unlike other approximate approaches, no scaling factor is required to improve the agreement between PESP charges and the underlying ab initio results. PESP calculations are an order of magnitude faster than the simplest ab initio calculation (STO-3G) on large molecules while achieving a level of accuracy that rivals much more elaborate ab initio methods. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Comput Chem 18: 955–969, 1997