An Efficient Approach to Large-Scale Ab Initio Conformational Energy Profiles of Small Molecules

Accurate conformational energetics of molecules are of great significance to understand maby chemical properties. They are also fundamental for high-quality parameterization of force fields. Traditionally, accurate conformational profiles are obtained with density functional theory (DFT) methods. However, obtaining a reliable energy profile can be time-consuming when the molecular sizes are relatively large or when there are many molecules of interest. Furthermore, incorporation of data-driven deep learning methods into force field development has great requirements for high-quality geometry and energy data. To this end, we compared several possible alternatives to the traditional DFT methods for conformational scans, including the semi-empirical method GFN2-xTB and the neural network potential ANI-2x. It was found that a sequential protocol of geometry optimization with the semi-empirical method and single-point energy calculation with high-level DFT methods can provide satisfactory conformational energy profiles hundreds of times faster in terms of optimization.