Adhesion, forces and the stability of interfaces.

Weak molecular interactions (WMI) are responsible for processes such as physisorption; they are essential for the structure and stability of interfaces, and for bulk properties of liquids and molecular crystals. The dispersion interaction is one of the four basic interactions types - electrostatics, induction, dispersion and exchange repulsion - of which all WMIs are composed. The fact that each class of basic interactions covers a wide range explains the large variety of WMIs.

Dispersion Interactions and the Stability of Amine Dimers.

Weak, intermolecular interactions in amine dimers were studied by using the combination of a dispersionless density functional and a function that describes the dispersion contribution to the interaction energy. The validity of this method was shown by comparison of structural and energetic properties with data obtained with a conventional density functional and the coupled cluster method. The stability of amine dimers was shown to depend on the size, the shape, and the relative orientation of the alkyl substituents, and it was shown that the stabilization energy for large substituents is dominated by dispersion interactions.