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Updated: Jun 6, 2026

Computation of Atmospheric Concentrations of Molecular Clusters from ab initio Thermochemistry
Published on: April 8, 2020
Computing Relative Free Energies of Solvation using Single Reference Thermodynamic Integration Augmented with
Ilja V Khavrutskii1, Anders Wallqvist
1Biotechnology HPC Software Applications Institute, Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Fort Detrick, MD 21702.
Abstract:
This paper introduces an efficient single-topology variant of Thermodynamic Integration (TI) for computing relative transformation free energies in a series of molecules with respect to a single reference state. The presented TI variant that we refer to as Single-Reference TI (SR-TI) combines well-established molecular simulation methodologies into a practical computational tool. Augmented with Hamiltonian Replica Exchange (HREX), the SR-TI variant can deliver enhanced sampling in select degrees of freedom. The utility of the SR-TI variant is demonstrated in calculations of relative solvation free energies for a series of benzene derivatives with increasing complexity. Noteworthy, the SR-TI variant with the HREX option provides converged results in a challenging case of an amide molecule with a high (13-15 kcal/mol) barrier for internal cis/trans interconversion using simulation times of only 1 to 4 ns.
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