Molecular Dynamics simulations of liquid isoquinoline as a function of temperature

Molecular Dynamics simulations of isoquinoline in liquid phase have been conducted in the temperature range 300-365 K corresponding to the normal liquid phase in order to investigate the evolution of translational and rotational diffusion with temperature. Molecules are supposed to be rigid and interact through an all-atom potential composed of Coulombic and Lennard-Jones terms. Translational diffusion coefficients are computed from velocity autocorrelation functions and mean square displacement. Anisotropic rotational diffusion coefficients are computed from angular velocity autocorrelation functions. The evolution of the C-13 spin-lattice relaxation time with temperature has been obtained from the simulations and compared with experimental results. A small non-Arrhenius behavior, more pronounced than what was observed experimentally, has been found for this property. The structure has been analyzed in terms of populations of different kinds of first-neighbor dimers. A continuous evolution of the structure with temperature has been observed. The general trend is thus a continuous smooth evolution of the structure at dimer level and a slight non-Arrhenius evolution for diffusion coefficients and reorientational correlation times. These results are compared with those obtained for liquid quinoline where a clear non-Arrhenius break around 290 K was observed for the C-13 spin-lattice relaxation time from experiments [D. Jalabert, J.-B. Robert, H. Roux-Buisson, J.-P. Kintzinger, J.-M. Lehn, R. Zinzius, D. Canet, P. Tekely, Europhys. Lett. 15 (1991) 435] and from simulations [C. Millot, J.-C. Soetens, N. Ahmad, R. Adnan, Europhys. Lett. 96 (2011) 43002]. Moreover, the identification of break temperatures for liquid isoquinoline appears to be less clear than for quinoline. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.