A Transferable Intermolecular Potential for Nitramine Crystals

Abstract

We have analyzed the transferability of a previously proposed Buckingham repulsion.dispersion intermolecular potential for the explosive hexahydro-l,3,5-s-trinitro-l,3,5-s-triazine (RDX) (Sorescu, D. C., B. M. Rice, and D. L. Thompson, Journal of physical Chemistry B, vol. 101, p. 798, 1997) to predict the crystal structures (within the approximation of rigid molecules) of a database of 30 nitramines. These include acyclic, monocyclic, and polycyclic molecules. It is shown that the proposed potential model is able to accurately reproduce the crystallographic structures and lattice energies (where available) of these crystals. For the majority of these crystals, the best agreement with experimental structural and energetic data is obtained in those cases when the electrostatic charges have been determined using ab initio methods that include electron correlations effects (namely MP2 and B3LYP). The use 0 the electrostatic charges calculated at the Hartree-Fock level results in large deviations of the predicted lattice energies from the experimental values. The deviations of the lattice energies can be significantly decreased by scaling the electrostatic charges with a constant factor.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2000
Accession Number
ADA386644

Entities

People

  • Betsy M. Rice
  • Dan C. Sorescu
  • Donald L. Thompson

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Alkanes
  • Chemical Compounds
  • Chemical Engineering
  • Chemistry
  • Computational Chemistry
  • Crystal Lattices
  • Crystal Structure
  • Crystals
  • Density Functional Theory
  • Electrostatic Charge
  • Energetic Materials
  • First Principles Calculations
  • Materials
  • Molecular Dynamics
  • Molecules
  • Organic Chemistry
  • Physical Chemistry

Fields of Study

  • Chemistry

Readers

  • Quantum Chemistry

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics