The Monomer Electron Density Force Field (MEDFF): A Physically Inspired Model for Non-Covalent Interactions

We propose a methodology to derive pairwise-additive noncovalent force fields from monomer electron densities without any empirical input. Energy expressions are based on the symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT) decomposition of interaction energies. This ensures a physically motivated force field featuring an electrostatic, exchange repulsion, dispersion, and induction contribution, which contains two types of parameters. First, each contribution depends on several fixed atomic parameters, resulting from a partitioning of the monomer electron density. Second, each of the last three contributions (exchange-repulsion, dispersion, and induction) contains exactly one linear fitting parameter. These three so-called interaction parameters in the model are initially estimated separately using SAPT reference calculations for the S66x8 database of noncovalent dimers. In a second step, the three interaction parameters are further refined simultaneously to reproduce CCSD(T)/CBS interaction energies for the same database. The limited number of parameters that are fitted to dimer interaction energies (only three) avoids ill-conditioned fits that plague conventional parameter optimizations. For the exchange repulsion and dispersion component, good results are obtained for all dimers in the S66x8 database using one single value for the associated interaction parameters. The values of those parameters can be considered universal and can also be used for dimers not present in the original database used for fitting. For the induction component such an approach is only viable for the dispersion dominated dimers in the S66x8 database. For other dimers (such as hydrogen-bonded complexes), we show that our methodology remains applicable. However, the interaction parameter needs to be determined on a case-specific basis. As an external validation:, the force field predicts interaction energies in good agreement with CCSD(T)/CBS values for dispersion dominated dimers extracted from an HIV-II protease crystal structure with a bound ligand (indinavir). Furthermore, experimental second virial coefficients of small alkanes and alkenes are well reproduced.