Electrostatic Polarization Effects and Hydrophobic Hydration in Ethanol-Water Solutions from Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Nonadditive electrostatic force fields based on the charge equilibration formalism coupled with long time-scale molecular dynamics simulations are used to investigate the microscopic structural aspects of hydrophobic hydration in ethanol-water solutions. Employing a combination of polarizable ethanol and water force fields (developed independently), we find that solution properties are satisfactorily reproduced across the ethanol mole fraction range between 0.1 and 0.9. Solution densities are predicted within 3.6% of experimental measurements, while excess mixing enthalpies are overestimated as in earlier studies. The solvation free energy of ethanol in infinite dilution is determined via thermodynamic integration to be 5.70 +/- 0.23 kcal/mol, overestimating the free energetics of solvation relative to experiment (5.01 kcal/mol). Bulk solution dielectric constants and diffusion constants reproduce experimental trends and are in reasonable agreement across the ethanol concentration range studied. Because of explicit accounting of induction effects, ethanol and water exhibit varying molecular dipole moment distributions with concentration. The polarizable ethanol model, possessing higher condensed-phase polarizability relative to the TIP4P-FQ water model (4.54 angstrom(3) versus 1.1 angstrom(3), respectively), displays greater variation upon perturbation by the electric field of water. With regard to hydrophobic hydration, the current force fields indicate positive hydrogen bonding excess for water in the dilute ethanol concentration range, consistent with previous theoretical and experimental studies. Strikingly, we find that there are both positive and negative hydrogen bond excess contributions within the first hydration shell of both the ethanol hydroxyl oxygen and ethylene carbon atoms. The larger positive contributions dominate the overall hydrogen bonding patterns to yield overall net positive excesses. Moreover, we do not find evidence of excess hydrogen bonding vicinal to the nonpolar moieties as has been suggested based on the iceberg-like models proposed by Frank and Evans. The present results suggest negative excess in the regions surrounding the alkyl groups that vis-a-vis corresponds to a reduction in the average molecular dipole moment of resident water molecules due to smaller dipole induction in the weaker electrostatic fields of the nonpolar groups.