Diffusion energy profiles in silica mesoporous molecular sieves modelled with the fragment molecular orbital method

The fragment molecular orbital (FMO) method is used to model truncated portions of mesoporous silica nanoparticle (MSN) pores. The application of the FMO/RHF (restricted Hartree-Fock) method to MCM-41 type MSNs is discussed and an error analysis is given. The FMO/RHF method is shown to reliably approximate the RHF energy (error approximate to 0.2 kcal/mol), dipole moment (error approximate to 0.2 debye) and energy gradient (root mean square [RMS] error approximate to 0.2 x 10(-3) a.u./bohr). Several FMO fragmentation schemes are employed to provide guidance for future applications to MSN models. An MSN pore model is functionalised with (phenyl)propyl substituents and the diffusion barrier for benzene passing through the pore is computed by the FMO/RHF-D method with the Grimme dispersion correction (RHF-D). For the reaction coordinates examined here, the maximum FMO/RHF-D interaction energies range from -0.3 to -5.8 kcal/mol.