We report catalytic conditions for the direct substitution of arenes with numerous classes of alcohols and epoxides that were not previously accessible-all without pre-activation of either reaction partner. Furthermore, since the products of epoxide substitution are alcohols, this discovery enables the direct substitution of epoxides with two different arenes in one pot. The key to the reactivity relies on the fluorinated solvent hexafluoroisopropanol, which dramatically lowers kinetic barriers.

Neural Network Potentials (NNPs) have quickly emerged as powerful computational methods for modeling large chemical systems with the accuracy of quantum mechanical methods but at a much smaller computational cost....

Neural Network Potentials (NNPs) have quickly emerged as powerful computational methods for modeling large chemical systems with the accuracy of quantum mechanical methods but at a much smaller computational cost. To make the training and evaluation of the underlying neural networks practical, these methods commonly cutoff interatomic interactions at a modest range (e.g., 5~\AA), so longer-range interactions like London dispersion are neglected. This limits the accuracy of these models for intermolecular interactions. In this work, we develop a new NNP designed for modeling chemical systems were dispersion is an essential component. This new NNP is extended to treat dispersion interactions rigorously by calculating atomic dispersion coefficients through a second NN, which is trained to reproduce the coefficients from the quantum-mechanically derived exchange-hole dipole moment (XDM) model. Calculation of the dispersion component of intermolecular interactions through this scheme provides results in very good agreement with the QM data, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.6 kcal/mol and a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.98. The dispersion components of these intermolecular interactions are predicted in excellent agreement with the QM data, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.02 kcal/mol and an R2 of 1.00. This combined dispersion-corrected NNP, called ANIPBE0-MLXDM, predicts intermolecular interaction energies for complexes from the DE370K test set with an MAE of 0.5 kcal/mol and an R2 of 0.94 relative to high-level ab initio results (CCSD(T)/CBS), but with a computational cost that is billions of times smaller. The ANIPBE0-MLXDM method is effective for simulating large-scale dispersion-driven systems, like gas adsorption in porous materials, molecular liquids, and nanostructures, on a single computer workstation.

Neural Network Potentials (NNPs) have quickly emerged as powerful computational methods for modeling large chemical systems with the accuracy of quantum mechanical methods but at a much smaller computational cost. To make the training and evaluation of the underlying neural networks practical, these methods commonly cut off interatomic interactions at a modest range (e.g., 5.2 Å), so longer-range interactions like London dispersion are neglected. This limits the accuracy of these models for intermolecular interactions. In this work, we develop a new NNP designed for modeling chemical systems where dispersion is an essential component. This new NNP is extended to treat dispersion interactions rigorously by calculating atomic dispersion coefficients through a second set of NNs, which is trained to reproduce the coefficients from the quantum-mechanically derived exchange-hole dipole moment (XDM) model. The NNP with this dispersion correction predicts intermolecular interactions in very good agreement with the QM data, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.67 kcal/mol and a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.97. The dispersion components of these intermolecular interactions are predicted in excellent agreement with the QM data, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.01 kcal/mol and an R2 of 1.00. This combined dispersion-corrected NNP, called ANIPBE0-MLXDM, predicts intermolecular interaction energies for complexes from the DES370K test set with an MAE of 0.69 kcal/mol and an R2 of 0.97 relative to high-level ab initio results (CCSD(T)), but with a computational cost that is billions of times smaller. The ANIPBE0-MLXDM method is effective for simulating large-scale dispersion-driven systems, such as molecular liquids and gas adsorption in porous materials, on a single computer workstation.