Computational study on the relative acidity of acetic acid by the QM/MM method combined with the theory of energy representation

We have applied the quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) method combined with the theory of energy representation (ER) to study the acidity of acetic acid in aqueous solution. We have focused our attention on the relative acidity Delta pK(a) of the molecule with respect to water solvent to circumvent the ambiguity of the solvation free energies of the molecular species referred to as proton. The value of Delta pK(a) for the acetic acid has been computed as -11.5 when we adopt the free energy change in the gas phase obtained by the B3LYP functional, which is in excellent agreement with the experimental value of -11.0. It has been demonstrated that the QM/MM-ER approach recently developed gives an adequate description for the solvation free energies related to the acidity/basicity calculations of organic molecules.