具有分子机器、分子开关功能的自组装超分子体系

本文介绍了具有分子梭或分子开关性质的新型轮烷和索烃超分子以及具有分子机器功能的其它类型化学和生物分子的国际研究最新动态。     

分子陀螺的设计、合成与组装

近来,科学家设计和合成了系列分子水平的陀螺。类似于儿童的玩具陀螺仪,这种分子陀螺由一个转子、一个定子框架和连接定子和转子的轴组成。定子框架通过自身的刚性结构为中心转子的转动提供足够的内在自由度,得以对内部的转子实施保护。并使得分子陀螺成为一个理想的分子转子。当转子上有偶极距时,则可能在外来电、磁、光的刺激下进行定向转动,成为分子马达。化学家们通过X射线晶体衍射技术、动态核磁技术、理论计算化学、热力学分析等方法表征了分子陀螺的各种特征,并积极探索其潜在的应用价值。本文着重介绍分子陀螺,以及超分子陀螺仪的发展历史以及研究进展。     

发光性受体的分子设计与分子识别

介绍了发光受体的几种典型分子识别模型。从分子识别与超分子化学的角度综述了它们在分子离子识别中的应用。对近几年发展较快的分子印迹技术及其应用进行了综述。引用文献71篇。     

溶液酸碱度调控的分子机器与分子开关

人工分子机器按其能量驱动方式可以分为化学驱动、电化学驱动和光驱动三类.溶液酸碱度调控(p H调控)驱动属于化学驱动的一种,其基本原理是通过加入酸碱性化合物调节溶液的酸碱度从而改变体系中各种组分的化学性质,实现分子机器的运动.利用溶液酸碱度调控已成为人工组装分子机器最常用的能量供应方式之一.对溶液酸碱度调控的分子机器和分子开关进行了详细综述,分别总结了基于冠醚和其他大环主体的溶液酸碱度调控分子机器与分子开关的制备及酸碱调控方法,并展望了它们在信息存储、电子器件及药物传递等领域中的应用.     

光电功能配位化合物的分子设计和合成

本文分别从分子导电、光电转化、铁电、磁性和多功能等方面,简要介绍了我们科研群体近十年来在光电功能配位化合物的分子设计与合成研究方面取得的进展。     

超分子机器的现状与发展趋势

人工分子机器的未来是什么?一种公认的发展趋势是面向未来智能应用的仿生可做功型软物质材料.近年来对于该领域的基础探索已初现端倪,尤其是利用超分子化学的策略,在人工分子机器的基元骨架上引入非共价组装位点,进而促进人工分子机器从离散式的运作模式集成、组装、放大至更高尺度的宏观层面,以此实现分子尺度微观运动的动态性集群式放大至宏观层面,引起超分子组装软材料的刺激响应性行为甚至是对外做功.本文将聚焦“超分子机器”这一论题,总结、讨论该领域的国内外发展现状,并展望未来发展面临的机遇和挑战.     

分子印迹电化学传感器敏感膜体系的构建及其研究进展

分子印迹技术具有构效预定性、特异识别性和广泛应用性的特点,在色谱分离、固相萃取、仿生传感器、模拟酶催化和膜分离等方面得到了广泛应用。近年来,分子印迹电化学传感器(MIECS)的研究日益受到人们的重视。在MIECS设计过程中,分子印迹敏感膜体系的构建非常关键,它直接影响着传感器的性能。该文简要介绍了MIECS的分类及其检测原理,对传统体系、自组装体系、分子印迹聚合物粒子镶嵌体系、电聚合体系和溶胶-凝胶体系等5种MIECS敏感膜体系的构建方法、特点及其研究进展进行综述,并展望了MIECS的发展方向。     

基于π体系的超分子功能材料的制备与应用研究

近年来,聚集态结构材料制备方法的快速发展和应用领域的不断拓宽使得构建更小、更快、功能性强、性能优越的分子器件成为可能。π体系有机共轭分子作为构筑纳米结构的一个新颖单元,越来越吸引人们的注意。本文从纳米材料的概念和特点出发,介绍了基于π体系有机共轭分子的超分子功能材料以及无机/有机杂化功能材料体系的构建方法。我们重点讨论了经典自组装的方法,并且进一步探讨了自组装过程中常见的几种驱动力对形成聚集态结构起到的重要作用。在材料制备的基础之上,我们还探讨了各种功能化器件的构建以及它们在场发射、光电探测、太阳能电池、传感器、非线性光学材料、光波导材料等领域的广泛应用。     

化学驱动的[2]轮烷型分子梭

机械互锁的轮烷型分子梭在分子机器化学领域具有重要的位置,可通过"积小为大"的方法在分子水平进行新材料的自组装.在外界的刺激下,大环分子可以在轴分子的不同识别位点间或态间往复穿梭,从而引起体系物理或化学性质的交替变化,这种变化又构成了一类基本的机械开关,可以用来执行特定的功能,在分子开关、信息储存和处理等领域具有潜在的应用前景,是超分子化学领域的研究热点.本文以[2]轮烷型分子梭的驱动力(外部刺激)为主线,分别从酸碱驱动、离子配位作用驱动和溶剂极性改变引起的疏水驱动等角度,综述了近年来化学驱动的[2]轮烷型分子梭在合成和应用方面的最新研究进展,同时介绍了其他力(如热力学参数熵、互锁体系中修饰基团尺寸大小、外加化学氧化剂或还原剂、得失电子引起的电化学氧化还原以及紫外-可见光照射诱发的偶氮苯顺反光异构化等方式)驱动的轮烷型分子梭的进展,最后对化学驱动的[2]轮烷型分子梭的未来发展趋势进行了展望.     

Time‐dependent density functional theory study on direction‐dependent electron and hole transfer processes in molecular systems

We report on real‐time time‐dependent density functional theory calculations on direction‐dependent electron and hole transfer processes in molecular systems. As a model system, we focus on α‐sulfur. It is shown that time scale of the electron transfer process from a negatively charged S₈ molecule to a neighboring neutral monomer is comparable to that of a strong infrared‐active molecular vibrations of the dimer with one negatively charged monomer. This results in a strong coupling between the electrons and the nuclei motion which eventually leads to S₈ ring opening before the electron transfer process is completed. The open‐ring structure is found to be stable. The similar infrared‐active peak in the case of hole transfer, however, is shown to be very weak and hence no significant scattering by the nuclei is possible. The presented approach to study the charge transfer processes in sulfur has direct applications in the increasingly growing research field of charge transport in molecular systems. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A theoretical study on the cyclopropane adsorption onto the copper surfaces by density functional theory and quantum chemical molecular dynamics methods

We report a theoretical study on the cyclopropane adsorption onto Cu(1 1 1) surfaces by density functional theory (DFT) and quantum chemical molecular dynamics methods. The equilibrium geometry of the physisorbed species was obtained using both periodic and cluster models by DFT methods that employ Cambridge serial total energy package (CASTEP), DMol ab initio quantum chemistry software of Accelrys’ materials studio (DMol), and Amsterdam density functional (ADF) program. It was found that the adsorbate molecule was tilted towards the metal surface with one C---C bond (upwards) parallel to the surface and that the physisorption occurred via a third carbon atom pointing (downwards) towards the surface. The electronic distribution and geometrical structure of physisorbed cyclopropane were slightly deviated from its gas phase molecule. The calculated vibrational frequencies and adsorption energies are close to experimental data, confirming the reliability of our DFT results. The adsorption process was simulated using our novel tight-binding quantum chemical molecular dynamics program, ‘Colors’. The calculation results indicated that both the adsorption and desorption processes of cyclopropane took place molecularly. The electron transfer and structural properties of equilibrium position obtained by ‘Colors’ are consistent with those by the first principles DFT methods.     

A density functional theory-based chemical potential equalisation approach to molecular polarizability

The electron density changes in molecular systems in the presence of external electric fields are modeled for simplicity in terms of the induced charges and dipole moments at the individual atomic sites. A chemical potential equalisation scheme is proposed for the calculation of these quantities and hence the dipole polarizability within the framework of density functional theory based linear response theory. The resulting polarizability is expressed in terms of the contributions from individual atoms in the molecule. A few illustrative numerical calculations are shown to predict the molecular polarizabilities in good agreement with available results. The usefulness of the approach to the calculation of intermolecular interaction needed for computer simulation is highlighted.     

One‐particle density matrix functional for correlation in molecular systems

Based on the analysis of the general properties for the one‐ and two‐particle reduced density matrices, a new natural orbital functional is obtained. It is shown that by partitioning the two‐particle reduced density matrix in an antisymmeterized product of one‐particle reduced density matrices and a correction Γ^c we can derive a corrected Hartree–Fock theory. The spin structure of the correction term from the improved Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory is considered to take into account the correlation between pairs of electrons with antiparallel spins. The analysis affords a nonidempotent condition for the one‐particle reduced density matrix. Test calculations of the correlation energy and the dipole moment of several molecules in the ground state demonstrate the reliability of the formalism. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem 94: 317–323, 2003     

Investigating the impact of operating parameters on molecular weight distributions using functional regression

Molecular weight distributions (MWDs) are inherently functional observations in which differential weight fraction is expressed as a function of chain length. Conventional approaches for analyzing and predicting MWDs include discretization and treatment as multi-response estimation problems, characterization using moments, and detailed mechanistic modeling to predict fractions for each chain length. However, these approaches can be sensitive to loss of information, complexity and problem conditioning. An alternative is to treat the MWDs as functional observations, and to use techniques from Functional Data Analysis (FDA), notably functional regression. The objective of this paper is to develop and apply empirical modeling techniques based on functional regression for investigating the impact of operating parameters on MWDs.     

Study on the construction of satisfactory nonorthogonal localized molecular orbitals

Comparing to orthogonal localized molecular orbitals (OLMO), the nonorthogonal localized molecular orbitals (NOLMO) exhibit bonding pictures more accordant with those in the traditional chemistry. They are more contracted, so that they have a better transferability and better performances for the calculation of election correlation energies and for the linear scaling algorithms of large systems. The satisfactory NOLMOs should be as contracted as possible while their shapes and spatial distribution keep in accordance with the traditional chemical bonding picture. It is found that the spread of NOLMOs is a monotonic decreasing function of their orthogonality, and it may reduce to any extent as the orthogonality descends. However, when the orthogonality descends to some point, the shapes and spatial distribution of the NOLMOs deviate drastically from the traditional chemical bonding picture, and finally the NOLMOs tend to linear dependence. Without the requirement of orthogonalization, some other constrain     

Determination of extremely localized molecular orbitals in the framework of density functional theory

Extremely localized molecular orbitals are rigorously localized on only a preselected set of atoms and do not have any tails outside the localization region. The importance of these orbitals lies in their ability to be transferred from one molecule to another one. A new algorithm to determine extremely localized molecular orbitals in the framework of the density functional theory method is presented. This could also be a valuable tool in the quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics methodology where localized molecular orbitals are used to describe covalent bonds across the frontier region. The present approach is used to build up the electron density of thymopentin, a polypeptide constituted by five residues, starting from extremely localized molecular orbitals determined on a set of model molecules. The results obtained confirm good transferability properties for these orbitals.Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Quantum Chemistry satellite meeting in honor of Jean-Louis Rivail     

Hierarchical parallelization of divide-and-conquer density functional tight-binding molecular dynamics and metadynamics simulations

Massively parallel divide-and-conquer density functional tight-binding (DC-DFTB) molecular dynamics and metadynamics simulations are efficient approaches for describing various chemical reactions and dynamic processes of large complex systems via quantum mechanics. In this study, DC-DFTB simulations were combined with multi-replica techniques. Specifically, multiple walkers metadynamics, replica exchange molecular dynamics, and parallel tempering metadynamics methods were implemented hierarchically into the in-house Dcdftbmd program. Test simulations in an aqueous phase of the internal rotation of formamide and conformational changes of dialanine showed that the newly developed extensions increase the sampling efficiency and the exploration capabilities in DC-DFTB configuration space.     

Design of biofunctional molecular and supramolecular systems: Membrane transport models

Cell membranes show a variety of functions that are essential for cell survival. Among them, active transport is a typical high functionality that the biomembrane system has realized. To understand and mimic the functionality of the biomembrane transport systems, carrier-mediated active transport systems are studied. Affinity switching of the carrier, i.e., high substrate affinity in the extraction and low affinity in the release processes, is the effective approach to achieve artificial active transport. Free energy to drive this active transport is supplied in the affinity-swtiching process. This paper describes our recent results on design and performance of novel molecular and supramolecular active transport systems, in which carriers are designed by the affinity-switching concept.     

Fractional occupation numbers and spin density functional calculations of degenerate systems

We implemented ab initio self‐consistent field (SCF) fractional occupation numbers (FON) calculation with Dunlap's interpolation scheme for the twisted ethylene, which is a prototype molecule of a σ–π biradical system. The calculational results are compared with those of complete‐active‐space (CAS) SCF and spin‐unrestricted Kohn–Sham (UKS) calculations on potential surfaces, occupation numbers of natural orbitals, and correlation entropies. It was found that the UKS methods gave similar results to CASSCF, while the FON solutions appeared in only the nearly complete degenerate region. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem 93: 317–323, 2003