Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol.110, No.18, 9116-9127, 1999
Structures, energetics, and spectra of fluoride-water clusters F-(H2O)(n), n = 1-6: Ab initio study
F-(H2O)(n) (n=1-6) clusters have been studied using ab initio calculations. This is an extensive work to search for various low-lying energy conformers, for example, including 13 conformers for n=6. Our predicted enthalpies and free energies are in good agreement with experimental values. For n=4 and 6, both internal and surface structures are almost isoenergetic at 0 K, while internal structures are favored with increasing temperature due to the entropic effect. For n=5, the internal structure is favored at both 0 and 298 K under 1 atm. These are contrasted to the favored surface structures in other small aqua-halide complexes. The ionization potential, charge-transfer-to-solvent (CTTS) energy, and O-H stretching vibrational spectra are reported to facilitate future experimental work. Many-body interaction potential analyses are presented to help improve the potential functions used in molecular simulations. The higher order many-body interaction energies are found to be important to compare the energetics of the various conformers and compare the stability of the internal over the surface state.