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Automated and high-throughput quantum chemical investigations into chemical processes have become feasible in great detail and broad scope. This results in an increase in complexity of the tasks and in the amount of generated data. An efficient and intuitive way for an operator to interact with these data and to steer virtual experiments is required. Here, we introduce Heron, a graphical user interface that allows for advanced human-machine interactions with quantum chemical exploration campaigns into molecular structure and reactivity. Heron offers access to interactive and automated explorations of chemical reactions with standard electronic structure modules, haptic force feedback, microkinetic modeling, and refinement of data by automated correlated calculations including black-box complete active space calculations. It is tailored to the exploration and analysis of vast chemical reaction networks. We show how interoperable modules enable advanced workflows and pave the way for routine low-entrance-barrier access to advanced modeling techniques.

The software for chemical interaction networks (SCINE) project aims at pushing the frontier of quantum chemical calculations on molecular structures to a new level. While calculations on individual structures as well as on simple relations between them have become routine in chemistry, new developments have pushed the frontier in the field to high-throughput calculations. Chemical relations may be created by a search for specific molecular properties in a molecular design attempt, or they can be defined by a set of elementary reaction steps that form a chemical reaction network. The software modules of SCINE have been designed to facilitate such studies. The features of the modules are (i) general applicability of the applied methodologies ranging from electronic structure (no restriction to specific elements of the periodic table) to microkinetic modeling (with little restrictions on molecularity), full modularity so that SCINE modules can also be applied as stand-alone programs or be exchanged for external software packages that fulfill a similar purpose (to increase options for computational campaigns and to provide alternatives in case of tasks that are hard or impossible to accomplish with certain programs), (ii) high stability and autonomous operations so that control and steering by an operator are as easy as possible, and (iii) easy embedding into complex heterogeneous environments for molecular structures taken individually or in the context of a reaction network. A graphical user interface unites all modules and ensures interoperability. All components of the software have been made available as open source and free of charge., (© 2024 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).)

Autonomously exploring chemical reaction networks with first-principles methods can generate vast data. Especially autonomous explorations without tight constraints risk getting trapped in regions of reaction networks that are not of interest. In many cases, these regions of the networks are only exited once fully searched. Consequently, the required human time for analysis and computer time for data generation can make these investigations unfeasible. Here, we show how simple reaction templates can facilitate the transfer of chemical knowledge from expert input or existing data into new explorations. This process significantly accelerates reaction network explorations and improves cost-effectiveness. We discuss the definition of the reaction templates and their generation based on molecular graphs. The resulting simple filtering mechanism for autonomous reaction network investigations is exemplified with a polymerization reaction.

Data-driven synthesis planning has seen remarkable successes in recent years by virtue of modern approaches of artificial intelligence that efficiently exploit vast databases with experimental data on chemical reactions. However, this success story is intimately connected to the availability of existing experimental data. It may well occur in retrosynthetic and synthesis design tasks that predictions in individual steps of a reaction cascade are affected by large uncertainties. In such cases, it will, in general, not be easily possible to provide missing data from autonomously conducted experiments on demand. However, first-principles calculations can, in principle, provide missing data to enhance the confidence of an individual prediction or for model retraining. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of such an ansatz and examine resource requirements for conducting autonomous first-principles calculations on demand., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts to declare., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Quantum chemical calculations on atomistic systems have evolved into a standard approach to studying molecular matter. These calculations often involve a significant amount of manual input and expertise, although most of this effort could be automated, which would alleviate the need for expertise in software and hardware accessibility. Here, we present the AutoRXN workflow, an automated workflow for exploratory high-throughput electronic structure calculations of molecular systems, in which (i) density functional theory methods are exploited to deliver minimum and transition-state structures and corresponding energies and properties, (ii) coupled cluster calculations are then launched for optimized structures to provide more accurate energy and property estimates, and (iii) multi-reference diagnostics are evaluated to back check the coupled cluster results and subject them to automated multi-configurational calculations for potential multi-configurational cases. All calculations are carried out in a cloud environment and support massive computational campaigns. Key features of all components of the AutoRXN workflow are autonomy, stability, and minimum operator interference. We highlight the AutoRXN workflow with the example of an autonomous reaction mechanism exploration of the mode of action of a homogeneous catalyst for the asymmetric reduction of ketones.

Fueled by advances in hardware and algorithm design, large-scale automated explorations of chemical reaction space have become possible. Here, we present our approach to an open-source, extensible framework for explorations of chemical reaction mechanisms based on the first-principles of quantum mechanics. It is intended to facilitate reaction network explorations for diverse chemical problems with a wide range of goals such as mechanism elucidation, reaction path optimization, retrosynthetic path validation, reagent design, and microkinetic modeling. The stringent first-principles basis of all algorithms in our framework is key for the general applicability that avoids any restrictions to specific chemical systems. Such an agile framework requires multiple specialized software components of which we present three modules in this work. The key module, Chemoton, drives the exploration of reaction networks. For the exploration itself, we introduce two new algorithms for elementary-step searches that are based on Newton trajectories. The performance of these algorithms is assessed for a variety of reactions characterized by a broad chemical diversity in terms of bonding patterns and chemical elements. Chemoton successfully recovers the vast majority of these. We provide the resulting data, including large numbers of reactions that were not included in our reference set, to be used as a starting point for further explorations and for future reference.

For many chemical processes the accurate description of solvent effects are vitally important. Here, we describe a hybrid ansatz for the explicit quantum mechanical description of solute-solvent and solvent-solvent interactions based on subsystem density functional theory and continuum solvation schemes. Since explicit solvent molecules may compromise the scalability of the model and transferability of the predicted solvent effect, we aim to retain both, for different solutes as well as for different solvents. The key for the transferability is the consistent subsystem decomposition of solute and solvent. The key for the scalability is the performance of subsystem DFT for increasing numbers of subsystems. We investigate molecular dynamics and stationary point sampling of solvent configurations and compare the resulting (Gibbs) free energies to experiment and theoretical methods. We can show that with our hybrid model reaction barriers and reaction energies are accurately reproduced compared to experimental data.

Quantum mechanical methods have been well-established for the elucidation of reaction paths of chemical processes and for the explicit dynamics of molecular systems. While they are usually deployed in routine manual calculations on reactions for which some insights are already available (typically from experiment), new algorithms and continuously increasing capabilities of modern computer hardware allow for exploratory open-ended computational campaigns that are unbiased and therefore enable unexpected discoveries. Highly efficient and even automated procedures facilitate systematic approaches toward the exploration of uncharted territory in molecular transformations and dynamics. In this work, we elaborate on such explorative approaches that range from reaction network explorations with (stationary) quantum chemical methods to explorative molecular dynamics and migrant wave packet dynamics. The focus is on recent developments that cover the following strategies. (i) Pruning search options for elementary reaction steps by heuristic rules based on the first-principles of quantum mechanics: Rules are required for reducing the combinatorial explosion of potentially reactive atom pairings, and rooting them in concepts derived from the electronic wave function makes them applicable to any molecular system. (ii) Enforcing reactive events by external biases: Inducing a reaction requires constraints that steer and direct elementary-step searches, which can be formulated in terms of forces, velocities, or supplementary potentials. (iii) Manual steering facilitated by interactive quantum mechanics: As ultrafast quantum chemical methods allow for real-time manual interactions with molecular systems, human-intuition-guided paths can be easily explored with suitable human-machine interfaces. (iv) New approaches for transition-state optimization with continuous curve representations can provide stable schemes to be driven in an automated way by allowing for an efficient tuning of the curve's parameters (instead of a manipulation of a collection of structures along the path), and (v) reactive molecular dynamics and direct wave packet propagation exploit the equations of motion of an underlying mechanical theory (usually, classical Newtonian mechanics or Schrödinger quantum mechanics). Explorative approaches are likely to replace the current state of the art in computational chemistry, because they reduce the human effort to be invested in reaction path elucidations, they are less prone to errors and bias-free, and they cover more extensive regions of the relevant configuration space. As a result, computational investigations that rely on these techniques are more likely to deliver surprising discoveries.

Modern computational chemistry has reached a stage at which massive exploration into chemical reaction space with unprecedented resolution with respect to the number of potentially relevant molecular structures has become possible. Various algorithmic advances have shown that such structural screenings must and can be automated and routinely carried out. This will replace the standard approach of manually studying a selected and restricted number of molecular structures for a chemical mechanism. The complexity of the task has led to many different approaches. However, all of them address the same general target, namely to produce a complete atomistic picture of the kinetics of a chemical process. It is the purpose of this overview to categorize the problems that should be targeted and to identify the principal components and challenges of automated exploration machines so that the various existing approaches and future developments can be compared based on well-defined conceptual principles.

Density functional theory (DFT) is used to calculate the relative free energies of deprotonation of the isomers of iron-group hydride complexes MHXL 4 where M = Fe, Ru, Os, L 4 = (CO) 4 or (PMe 2 CH 2 CH 2 PMe 2 ) 2 for a wide range of anionic ligands X. The free energies of the most stable isomers are used to calculate relative pK a values where K a refers to the acid dissociation constant for the equilibrium MHXL 4 → [MXL 4 ] - + H + . These are used to test the proposal that the pK a for a given metal complex in THF can be simply calculated by adding the contributions to the total pK a value from each ligand L; these are called ligand acidity constants (LAC) A L used in the LAC equation [R. H. Morris, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2014, 136, 1948-1959]. The A L are calculated using A L = 0.2 as a reference for the hydride ligand. The A L of certain less polarizable X ligands are found to be fairly constant (±1 to ±2 units) and consistent with the proposed LAC method for a range of the complexes considered: 2 for Me - , 1 for OH - , 1 for NH 2 - , 0 for B(OCH 2 CH 2 O - ) - , -1 for OMe - , -2 for SH - and -2 for SMe - . Other ligands have more variable A L values (±3 to ±5 units) because of high polarizability or other reasons: 1 for OtBu - , -1 for F - , -2 for BMe 2 - , -2 for NMe 2 - , -3 for Cl - , -3 for PMe 2 - , -3 for Br - , -5 for I - , -6 for CN - and -12 for SiCl 3 - . Iodide stabilizes the anion [MIL 4 ] - more than does fluoride in [MFL 4 ] - making iodide the more acidifying ligand despite its lower electronegativity. DFT is also used to validate the charge correction in the LAC equation.

Recent reports on the necessity of using externally orthogonal orbitals in subsystem density-functional theory (SDFT) [Annu. Rep. Comput. Chem., 8, 2012, 53; J. Phys. Chem. A, 118, 2014, 9182] are re-investigated. We show that in the basis-set limit, supermolecular Kohn-Sham-DFT (KS-DFT) densities can exactly be represented as a sum of subsystem densities, even if the subsystem orbitals are not externally orthogonal. This is illustrated using both an analytical example and in basis-set free numerical calculations for an atomic test case. We further show that even with finite basis sets, SDFT calculations using accurate reconstructed potentials can closely approach the supermolecular KS-DFT density, and that the deviations between SDFT and KS-DFT decrease as the basis-set limit is approached. Our results demonstrate that formally, there is no need to enforce external orthogonality in SDFT, even though this might be a useful strategy when developing projection-based DFT embedding schemes.

β-sheet-encoded anionic and cationic dendritic peptide amphiphiles form supramolecular copolymers when self-assembled in a 1:1 feed ratio of the monomers. These ampholytic materials have been designed for on-off polymerization in response to pH triggers. The cooperative supramolecular self-assembly process is switched on at a physiologically relevant pH value and can be switched off by increasing or decreasing the pH value., (Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)