A restricted-open-shell model chemistry based on the complete basis set-quadratic Becke3 (CBS-QB3) model is formulated and denoted ROCBS-QB3. As the name implies, this method uses spin-restricted wave functions, both for the direct calculations of the various components of the electronic energy and for extrapolating the correlation energy to the complete-basis-set limit. These modifications eliminate the need for empirical corrections that are incorporated in standard CBS-QB3 to compensate for spin contamination when spin-unrestricted wave functions are used. We employ an initial test set of 19 severely spin-contaminated species including doublet radicals and both singlet and triplet biradicals. The mean absolute deviation (MAD) from experiment for the new ROCBS-QB3 model (3.6+/-1.5 kJ mol(-1)) is slightly smaller than that of the standard unrestricted CBS-QB3 version (4.8+/-1.5 kJ mol(-1)) and substantially smaller than the MAD for the unrestricted CBS-QB3 before inclusion of the spin correction (16.1+/-1.5 kJ mol(-1)). However, when applied to calculate the heats of formation at 298 K for the moderately spin-contaminated radicals in the G2/97 test set, ROCBS-QB3 does not perform quite as well as the standard unrestricted CBS-QB3, with a MAD from experiment of 3.8+/-1.6 kJ mol(-1) (compared with 2.9+/-1.6 kJ mol(-1) for standard CBS-QB3). ROCBS-QB3 performs marginally better than standard CBS-QB3 for the G2/97 set of ionization energies with a MAD of 4.1+/-0.1 kJ mol(-1) (compared with 4.4+/-0.1 kJ mol(-1)) and electron affinities with a MAD of 3.9+/-0.2 kJ mol(-1) (compared with 4.3+/-0.2 kJ mol(-1)), but the differences in MAD values are comparable to the experimental uncertainties. Our overall conclusion is that ROCBS-QB3 eliminates the spin correction in standard CBS-QB3 with no loss in accuracy.

Barriers and enthalpies for methyl radical addition to both the C-and S-centers of CH 2 dS, CH 3 CHdS, and (CH 3 ) 2 CdS, and for the methyl-transfer reactions that interconvert the S-centered and C-centered radical products have been calculated via a variety of high-level ab initio molecular orbital procedures, including variants of the CBS, G3, G3-RAD, and W1 methods. An extensive assessment of the performance of the various theoretical procedures has been carried out. One of the important conclusions of this assessment is that the B3-LYP geometries, prescribed for several of these high-level composite methods, greatly overestimate the forming bond length in the addition transition structures, leading to a significant underestimation of the reaction barriers. The addition reactions are found to be highly exothermic and have relatively low barriers that are increased somewhat on methyl substitution. The reactions are also contra-thermodynamicsthat is, despite a clear thermodynamic preference for the S-centered radical product, the barriers for the production of the C-centered radical via addition to S are lower. Interconversion of the C-centered and S-centered radical products via a methyl-transfer reaction is a high-energy process.

Various contemporary theoretical procedures have been tested for their accuracy in predicting the bond dissociation energies (BDEs) and the radical stabilization energies (RSEs) for a test set of 22 monosubstituted methyl radicals. The procedures considered include the high-level W1, W1', CBS-QB3, ROCBS-QB3, G3(MP2)-RAD, and G3X(MP2)-RAD methods, unrestricted and restricted versions of the double-hybrid density functional theory (DFT) procedures B2-PLYP and MPW2-PLYP, and unrestricted and restricted versions of the hybrid DFT procedures BMK and MPWB1K, as well as the unrestricted DFT procedures UM05 and UM05-2X. The high-level composite procedures show very good agreement with experiment and are used to evaluate the performance of the comparatively less expensive DFT procedures. RMPWB1K and both RBMK and UBMK give very promising results for absolute BDEs, while additionally restricted and unrestricted X2-PLYP methods and UM05-2X give excellent RSE values. UM05, UB2-PLYP, UMPW2-PLYP, UM05-2X, and UMPWB1K are among the less well performing methods for BDEs, while UMPWB1K and UM05 perform less well for RSEs. The high-level theoretical results are used to recommend alternative experimental BDEs for propyne, acetaldehyde, and acetic acid.

Accurate and rapid crystal structure predictions have the potential to transform the development of new materials, particularly in fields with highly complex molecular structures (such as in drug development). In this work we present a novel cloud-computing crystal structure prediction (CSP) platform with the capability of scheduling hundreds of thousands CPU cores and integrating cutting-edge computational chemistry algorithms. This new cloud-computing based CSP platform has been applied to three crystalline drug substances of increasing complexity. The lattice energies of the experimental crystal structures are all within 4.0 kJ/mol of the lowest energy predicted structures. On the basis of the results of this work, the algorithm improvement and the mass computational power of cloud computing can reduce the whole CSP process to just 1–3 weeks for Z′ = 1 systems and less than 5 weeks for significantly more complex systems. Furthermore, it is possible to simultaneously perform calculations for multiple molecules if desired. As a result of these improvements, CSP calculations can potentially be applied in conjunction with state-of-the-art experimental screening techniques to reduce the risk of finding new solid forms after product launch provided that a sufficient number of stoichiometries and space groups are explored.

Crystal structure prediction (CSP) calculations can reduce risk and improve efficiency during drug development. Traditionally, CSP calculations use lattice energies computed through density functional theory. While this approach is often successful in predicting the low energy structures, it neglects the crucial role of thermal effects on polymorph stabilities. In the present study, we develop a robust and efficient protocol for predicting the relative stability of polymorphs at different temperatures. The protocol is executed on a highly parallel cloud computing infrastructure to produce results at time scales useful for drug development timelines. We demonstrate this protocol on molecule XXIII from the sixth crystal structure prediction blind test. Our results predict that Form D is the most stable experimentally observed polymorph at ambient temperature and Form C is the most stable at low temperature consistent with experiments also conducted in the present study.