Simple Liquid Models with Corrected Dielectric Constants

Molecular simulations often use explicit-solvent models. Sometimes explicit-solvent models can give inaccurate values for basic liquid properties, such as the density, heat capacity, and permittivity, as well as inaccurate values for molecular transfer free energies. Such errors have motivated the development of more complex solvents, such as polarizable models. We describe an alternative here. We give new fixed-charge models of solvents for molecular simulations water, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, and dichloromethane. Normally, such solvent models are parametrized to agree with experimental values of the neat liquid density and enthalpy of vaporization. Here, in addition to those properties, our parameters are chosen to give the correct dielectric constant. We find that these new parametrizations also happen to give better values for other properties, such as the self-diffusion coefficient. We believe that parametrizing fixed-charge solvent models to fit experimental dielectric constants may provide better and more efficient ways to treat solvents in computer simulations.