NaCl crystallization in apolar nanometer-sized confinement studied by atomistic simulations.

The structure and growth of molecular NaCl crystals in bulk and in a narrow, nanometer-sized apolar confinement are examined by explicit-water molecular dynamics computer simulations. It is demonstrated that fast crystallization and subsequent diffusion-controlled cluster growth in bulk is triggered by supersaturations that exceed a certain threshold value. In confinement, simulated in a pseudo grand canonical setup, salt is shown to be expelled from the narrow apolar slab region, and the effective ion concentration inside the nanoconfinement is always considerably lower than the reservoir salt concentration so that no fast crystallization takes place.

Electrolytes in a nanometer slab-confinement: ion-specific structure and solvation forces.

We study the liquid structure and solvation forces of dense monovalent electrolytes (LiCl, NaCl, CsCl, and NaI) in a nanometer slab-confinement by explicit-water molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, implicit-water Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, and modified Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) theories. In order to consistently coarse-grain and to account for specific hydration effects in the implicit methods, realistic ion-ion and ion-surface pair potentials have been derived from infinite-dilution MD simulations. The electrolyte structure calculated from MC simulations is in good agreement with the corresponding MD simulations, thereby validating the coarse-graining approach.

Ion specificity in α-helical folding kinetics.

The influence of the salts KCl, NaCl, and NaI at molar concentrations on the α-helical folding kinetics of the alanine-based oligopeptide Ace-AEAAAKEAAAKA-Nme is investigated by means of (explicit-water) molecular dynamics simulations and a diffusional analysis. The mean first passage times for folding and unfolding are found to be highly salt-specific. In particular, the folding times increase about 1 order of magnitude for the sodium salts.

Ion-specific thermodynamics of multicomponent electrolytes: a hybrid HNC/MD approach.

Using effective infinite dilution ion-ion interaction potentials derived from explicit-water molecular dynamics (MD) computer simulations in the hypernetted-chain (HNC) integral equation theory we calculate the liquid structure and thermodynamic properties, namely, the activity and osmotic coefficients of various multicomponent aqueous electrolyte mixtures. The electrolyte structure expressed by the ion-ion radial distribution functions is for most ions in excellent agreement with MD and implicit solvent Monte Carlo (MC) simulation results. Calculated thermodynamic properties are also represented consistently among these three methods.

Ion-specific excluded-volume correlations and solvation forces.

Realistic ion-ion and ion-surface potentials from explicit-water simulations are used in implicit-solvent Monte Carlo simulations to study the ionic structure and double-layer forces in a nanometer slab confinement. The highly salt-specific results can be reproduced and rationalized by a simple nonlocal Poisson-Boltzmann theory of a nonadditive primitive model, in which effective hard-sphere radii are obtained from the short-ranged part of the pair potentials. Steric corrections to solvation forces are mainly repulsive and strongly coupled to the ion-surface interactions.

Ionic force field optimization based on single-ion and ion-pair solvation properties.

Molecular dynamics simulations of ionic solutions depend sensitively on the force fields employed for the ions. To resolve the fine differences between ions of the same valence and roughly similar size and in particular to correctly describe ion-specific effects, it is clear that accurate force fields are necessary. In the past, optimization strategies for ionic force fields either considered single-ion properties (such as the solvation free energy at infinite dilution or the ion-water structure) or ion-pair properties (in the form of ion-ion distribution functions).

Structure-thermodynamics relation of electrolyte solutions.

The structure of aqueous LiCl, NaCl, KCl, CsCl, KF, and NaI solutions is calculated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the frequently employed Dang force-field in SPC/E water. By using liquid state theory, we integrate the structure to obtain the electrolytes' osmotic coefficient phi and systematically investigate force-field quality and structural consequences to ion-specific bulk thermodynamics. The osmotic coefficients phi(chi) calculated from the exact compressibility route for the cation-Cl(-) force-fields match experiments for concentrations rho approximately < 2M, while NaI and KF parameters fail.