Lennard-Jones Potentials for the Interaction of CO₂ with Five-Membered Aromatic Heterocycles

We used M06-2X/Def2-TZVPP to calculate a broad set of rigid interaction profiles between CO₂ and 30 different aromatic heterocycles, based on pyrrole, furan, and thiophene with ring positions subsituted with up to four nitrogens. For each system, several orientations of the fragments were explored to both find the preferred interaction mode and have information about other interaction modes that can contribute to the binding energy when CO₂ is captured by complex systems. From these data, Lennard-Jones potentials were obtained, which can be used for the parametrization of force fields that correctly describe the multipolar and dispersion interactions at play between these kinds of fragments. These results are expected to contribute to the development of new force fields for the study of chemical systems for the capture and sequestration of CO₂ and also directly for the design of such systems.