| Abstract: | Energetics and geometries for the hydrated gaseous halide anions have been computed from a simple model in which the molecular dipole of water was composed of two parts, one due to a lone pair on oxygen (60%) and the rest to formal charges on the nuclei. The calculations were made for both the symmetric and nonsymmetric structures. A variety of structures were used to compute potential energies and distances with up to six water molecules. The total energy consisted of a sum of electrostatic, polarization, dispersion, and repulsion terms. Various sets of repulsive potential parameters, ranging from those determined from molecular beam experiments to those determined using experimental ion–water distances or energies, have been employed to compute repulsive interaction energies. It was found that the range parameters play a significant role in deciding the magnitudes of the distances and energies, as the latter are most sensitive to them. It was also shown that with a simple correlation scheme the consistency of the experimental energies and distances can be tested separately without using repulsive potential parameters from other sources. It also suggests that a range of parameters can be used to compute repulsion energies. Despite the fact that the model is greatly simplified, the agreement of both the predicted ion-oxygen distances and energies with both experiment and other calculations is excellent. A detailed analysis of our calculation suggests that the negative ion clusters with one to three water molecules contain symmetric orientation of water molecules, while those with more than three may contain asymmetric orientations of water molecules or a mixture of both. From the log–log plots of hydration energies versus (R + radius of water molecule), we have proposed empirical expressions of the type ΔEn?1,n = 10·0x (R + 1.38)?y with both Pauling's and Ladd's radii for univalent ions with which stepwise hydration energies of the latter can be predicted if we know thier radii. The values predicted for the alkali cations are in excellent agreement with the experimental and theoretical values, indicating the consistency of the simple model. |
