Quantifying Uncertainties in Solvation Procedures for Modeling Aqueous Phase Reaction Mechanisms
Alex M. Maldonado, Satoshi Hagiwara, Tae Hoon Choi, Frank Eckert, Kathleen Schwarz, Ravishankar Sundararaman, Minoru Otani, John A. Keith
Abstract
counterion in the QM/MM simulations plays an insignificant role over ensemble averaged trajectories that describe the reaction pathway. However, solvent models used on static calculations gave much more variability in data depending on whether the system was modeled using explicit solvent shells and/or the counterion. We pinpoint this variability due to unphysical descriptions of charge-separated states in the gas phase (i.e., self-interaction errors), and we show that using more accurate hybrid functionals and/or explicit solvent shells lessens these errors. This work closes with recommended procedures for treating solvation in future computational efforts in studying renewable energy catalysis mechanisms.