Chemistry
Conformation-family Monte Carlo: A new method for crystal structure
prediction
,,,
,,
and,§
Baker
Laboratory of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
14853-1301; and Faculty
of Chemistry, University of Gdansk, Sobieskiego 18, 80-952 Gdansk,
Poland
Contributed by Harold A. Scheraga, September 12, 2001
A new global optimization method, Conformation-family Monte Carlo, has been developed recently for searching the conformational space of macromolecules. In the present paper, we adapted this method for prediction of crystal structures of organic molecules without assuming any symmetry constraints except the number of molecules in the unit cell. This method maintains a database of low energy structures that are clustered into families. The structures in this database are improved iteratively by a Metropolis-type Monte Carlo procedure together with energy minimization, in which the search is biased toward the regions of the lowest energy families. The Conformation-family Monte Carlo method is applied to a set of nine rigid and flexible organic molecules by using two popular force fields, AMBER and W99. The method performed well for the rigid molecules and reasonably well for the molecules with torsional degrees of freedom.
§ To whom reprint requests should be addressed. E-mail: has5@cornell.edu.