[gmx-users] Simulation of polarizable Carbon nanotubes

Justin Lemkul jalemkul at vt.edu
Fri Feb 20 19:20:59 CET 2015



On 2/20/15 12:57 PM, Jashimuddin Ashraf wrote:
> Dear users,
>
> I want to perform a molecular dynamic simulation of polarizable carbon
> nanotubes. I intend to implement this paper-
>
> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927025607000456
>
> I digged up the manual but could not find much help from it. I went through
> some mails in the gromacs user maillist, studied some .itp files and
> learned some elementary stuffs regarding the addition of virtual sites and
> shell atoms.I understand that I have to add both shell and virtual sites in
> this case.
>
> Now, before jumping right into a big nanotube molecule, I was trying to
> perform a simulation with a single benzene ring with a virtual site placed
> at the center and a shell attached to the virtual site.
>
> In my forcefield.itp file have the virtual site and the shell declared like
> this-
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> [ atomtypes ]
> ; name       mass      charge    ptype      sigma      eps
>    CJ1   1     12.01100     0.25   A      3.40000e-01  3.60100e-01
>    VS    1     0        0      D       0         0
>    SL     1     0          -1.5      S      0        0
>
> [ bondtypes ]
> `; i    j     func  b0          kb        gamma
>    CJ1    CJ1      3    0.1418   478.9000        21.867
>    VS     SL       1    0.06       2409
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here, I have considered a bond between the virtual site and the shell (the
> paper mentions something like it but does not provide with the bond
> length). Is it a mistake?
>

The equilibrium bond length should be zero (i.e. no induced polarization).

> and inside my topol.top file, I have-
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> [ atoms ]
> ;   nr       type  resnr residue  atom   cgnr     charge       mass
> typeB    chargeB      massB
>       1        CJ1      1      C      C      1        0.25     12.011   ;
> qtot 0.25
>       2        CJ1      1      C      C      1        0.25     12.011   ;
> qtot 0.5
>       3        CJ1      1      C      C      1        0.25     12.011   ;
> qtot 0.75
>       4        CJ1      1      C      C      1        0.25     12.011   ;
> qtot 1.00
>       5        CJ1      1      C      C      1        0.25     12.011   ;
> qtot 1.25
>       6        CJ1      1      C      C      1        0.25     12.011   ;
> qtot 1.50
>       7         VS      1      C     VS      1        0          0      ;
> qtot 1.50
>       8         SL      1      C      S      1       -1.5          0    ;
> qtot 0
>
>
> [ polarization ]
> ; virtual_site    shell    functiontype    alpha (in nm^3)
>   7        8    1        0.1
>

I only looked at the paper briefly, but it seems they are working with a model 
that makes use of anisotropic polarization.  In GROMACS, this is currently only 
available for water, so the model would not be supported.  It will be soon (I 
know I've been saying that for a while, but our paper regarding Drude 
simulations in GROMACS is just about done, after which I can provide the code).

>
> [ bonds ]
> ;  ai    aj funct            c0            c1            c2            c3
>      1     2     3
>      1     5     3
>      2     4     3
>      3     4     3
>      3     6     3
>      5     6     3
>      7     8     1
>
> [ dihedrals ]
> ;  ai    aj    ak    al funct            c0            c1
> c2            c3            c4            c5
>      5     1     2     4     3
>      2     1     5     6     3
>      1     2     4     3     3
>      6     3     4     2     3
>      4     3     6     5     3
>      1     5     6     3     3
>
> [ virtual_sites3 ]
> ; detailed calculation not shown here
> ; Dummy from            funct    a        b
>   7     4     5     6    1     0.5        0
>

You're missing a critical element here; the paper says that the shell does not 
interact with the carbon atoms of the ring, so you need to define exclusions 
manually.

-Justin

> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I ran an energy minimization for an emtol of 100 but it gives me a result
> like this-
>
> Steepest Descents converged to machine precision in 141 steps,
> but did not reach the requested Fmax < 100.
> Potential Energy  = -6.1810545e+06
> Maximum force     =  9.1656689e+12 on atom 4
> Norm of force     =  4.5828344e+12
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> If I run a production MD with this, the simulation blows up with this-
> MDStep=   40/18 EPot:          nan, rmsF:    nan
> Warning: Only triclinic boxes with the first vector parallel to the x-axis
> and the second vector in the xy-plane are supported.
>           Box (3x3):
>              Box[    0]={         nan,          nan,          nan}
>              Box[    1]={         nan,          nan,          nan}
>              Box[    2]={         nan,          nan,          nan}
>           Can not fix pbc.
> MDStep=   40/19 EPot:          nan, rmsF:    nan
> step 40: EM did not converge in 20 iterations, RMS force nan
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Is something wrong with my system itself? or is there anything wrong with
> my methods?
>
> I have been stuck at this for a very long time now and anything- any
> comment or hint would be very much helpful for me.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Jashimuddin Ashraf
>

-- 
==================================================

Justin A. Lemkul, Ph.D.
Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
School of Pharmacy
Health Sciences Facility II, Room 629
University of Maryland, Baltimore
20 Penn St.
Baltimore, MD 21201

jalemkul at outerbanks.umaryland.edu | (410) 706-7441
http://mackerell.umaryland.edu/~jalemkul

==================================================


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