CCL: Strange geometry optimization with breaking of H-bonds



I think that's fairly common.

P.S.: Those yellow carbons... Maybe you should consider using that CPK colour scheme for white backgrounds I've sent to support|,|chemcraftprog.com back in 2017.

On Tue, 23 Apr 2024 at 14:51, Grigoriy Zhurko reg_zhurko%chemcraftprog.com <owner-chemistry|,|ccl.net> wrote:
I have an Orca 5.0.3 job:

!B3LYP 6-31++G(D,P) Opt PAL3 CPCM(Water) ANFREQ

* xyz 0 1
...

The geometry optimization produced a structure at attach 1, with O16-H23 distance 2.63944, but with negative frequencies. To get rid of them, I repeated the job with these keywords:

!B3LYP 6-31++G(D,P) Opt PAL3 CPCM(Water) AnFreq
!TightOpt DefGrid3 VeryTightSCF

* xyz 0 1
...

Finally I got an optimized geometry without negative frequencies, but the structure is different - see attach 2. The distance O16-H23 is now 3.89712.
Isn't that strange that the optimized structure does not have this O:H hydrogen bond?
At attach 3 you can see one more optimized (at the same level ) structure, which seems to be ok - the O15..H21 distance is 2.27375. My intuition tells me that this is a correct calculation.
The structure from attach 1 was also computed at B3LYP-D4 level and everything seems ok - see attach 4 (O16..H23 distance is 2.21156):

!B3LYP D4 6-31++G(D,P) Opt PAL3 CPCM(Water) ANFREQ

* xyz 0 1
...

Maybe this is a bug in Orca?
Grigoriy Zhurko


--
ORCID | GitHub
Campus Universitário Trindade, Caixa Postal 476
88040-900, Florianópolis/SC, Brazil
+55-48-3721-6839
schneider.felipe|,|posgrad.ufsc.br