OpenMolcas: From Source Code to Insight
In this article we describe the OpenMolcas environment and invite the computational chemistry community to collaborate. The open-source project already includes a large number of new developments realized during the transition from the commercial MOLCAS product to the open-source platform. The paper initially describes the technical details of the new software development platform. This is followed by brief presentations of many new methods, implementations, and features of the OpenMolcas program suite. These developments include novel wave function methods such as stochastic complete active space self-consistent field, density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) methods, and hybrid multico…
Hydrogenolysis of hydroxymatairesinol on Y derived catalysts: a computational study
Hydrogenolysis of 7-hydroxymatairesinol (HMR) to matairesinol (MAT) occurs on palladium supported acidic catalysts. HMR has three stereochemical centres and naturally exists as a mixture of two diastereoisomers, namely RRR-HMR and SRR-HMR. The latter is significantly more reactive than the former, in the reaction above. In order to elucidate the hydrogenolysis mechanism, simple surface events involving HMR derivatives on aluminated faujasite (H-Y) fragments were simulated by quantum chemical calculations. The metallic function of a Pd/H-Y acidic catalyst was also mimicked by a minimal palladium cluster. Stereochemical evidences pointed already out that water β-elimination on the epimeric ce…
Systematic conformational search analysis of the SRR and RRR epimers of 7-hydroxymatairesinol
An extensive and systematic conformational search was performed on the two epimers of the natural lignan 7-hydroxymatairesinol (HMR), by means of a home-made Systematic Conformational Search Analysis (SCSA) code, designed to select more and more stable conformers through sequential geometry optimization of trial structures at increasing levels of calculation theory. In the present case, the starting molecular structures were selected by the semi-empirical AM1 method and filtered – i.e. decreased in number by choosing the more stable species – on the basis of their energy calculated by the HF method and the 6-31G(d) basis set. The geometries obtained were further refined by performing densit…