The Optical Rotation of Methyloxirane in Aqueous Solution: A Never Ending Story?

Lipparini, F.; Egidi, F.; Cappelli, C.; Barone, V. J. Chem. Theor. Comput. 2013, 9, 1880
Contributed by Steven Bachrach.
Reposted from Computational Organic Chemistry with permission

Computing the optical rotation of simple organic molecules can be a real challenge. One of the classic problems is methyloxirane. DFT typically gets the wrong sign, let alone the wrong value. Cappelli and Barone¹ have developed a QM/MM procedure where methyloxirane is treated with DFT (B3LYP/aug-cc-pVDZ or CAM-B3LYP/aubg-cc-pVDZ). Then 2000 arrangements of water about methyloxirane were obtained from an MD simulation. For each of these configurations, a supermolecule containing methyloxirane and all water molecules with 16 Å was identified. The waters of the supermolecule were treated as a polarized force field. This supermolecule is embedded into bulk water employing a conductor-polarizable continuum model (C-PCM). Lastly, inclusion of vibrational effects, and averaging over the 2000 configurations, gives a predicted optical rotation at 589 nm that is of the correct sign (which is not accomplished with a gas phase or simple PCM computation) and is within 10% of the correct value. The full experimental ORD spectrum is also quite nicely matched using this theoretical approach.

References

(1) Lipparini, F.; Egidi, F.; Cappelli, C.; Barone, V. "The Optical Rotation of Methyloxirane in Aqueous Solution: A Never Ending Story?," J. Chem. Theor. Comput. 2013, 9, 1880-1884, DOI:10.1021/ct400061z.

InChIs

(R)-Methyloxirane:
InChI=1S/C3H6O/c1-3-2-4-3/h3H,2H2,1H3/t3-/m1/s1
InChIKey=GOOHAUXETOMSMM-GSVOUGTGSA-N

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