How Many Methanol Molecules Can Solvate a Glycine: a PBE1PBE Approach

Microsolvation of glycine in methanol clusters is explored by the use of DFT calculation method. The lowest energy conformations within 16.72 kJ·mol-1 of the glycine clustering with one to six methanol molecules, which are obtained at the B3LYP/6-31+G(d) level of theory, are reoptimized at PBE1PBE/6-311+G(d,p). The calculated results agree with our previous results with B3LYP (Chin. J. Chem. Phys. 22 (2009) 577) that the clusters of two forms (Z-and N-form) tend to be isoenergetic when the number of the solvate molecules reaches six. Furthermore, this result is in good agreement with the experiment of the tryptophan-methanol clusters, implying that the present treatments are reasonable and reliable. The results also indicate that nine methanol molecules are not enough to fully solvate a glycine molecule, and a tentative estimation is obtained that ten methanol molecules may fully solvate a glycine molecule, which consists with the experiment results.