title: The interaction of carbohydrates and amino acids with aromatic systems studied by density functional and semi-empirical molecular orbital calculations with dispersion corrections.
abstract: Density functional theory (DFT-D) and semi-empirical (PM3-D) methods having an added dispersion correction have been used to study stabilising carbohydrate-aromatic and amino acid-aromatic interactions. The interaction energy for three simple sugars in different conformations with benzene, all give interaction energies close to 5 kcal mol(-1). Our original parameterization of PM3 (PM3-D) seriously overestimates this value, and has prompted a reparametrization which includes a modified core-core interaction term. With two additional parameters, the carbohydrate complexes, as well as the S22 data set, are well reproduced. The new PM3 scheme (PM3-D*) is found to describe the peptide bond-aromatic ring interactions accurately and, together with the DFT-D method, it is used to investigate the interaction of six amino acids with pyrene. Whilst the peptide backbone can adopt both stacked and T-shaped structures in the complexes with similar interaction energies, there is a preference for the unsaturated ring to adopt a stacked structure. Thus, peptides in which the latter interactions are maximised are likely to be the most effective for the functionalisation of carbon nanotubes.
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
authors.forename: Raman
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: Jonathan P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: McNamara
authors.forename: Rajesh K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Raju
authors.forename: Mark A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Vincent
authors.forename: Ian H
authors.initials: IH
authors.lastname: Hillier
authors.forename: Claudio A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Morgado
mesh_terms: D000596:Amino Acids / Q000737:chemistry*; D002241:Carbohydrates / Q000737:chemistry*; D008958:Models, Molecular
chemical_list: D000596:Amino Acids; D002241:Carbohydrates