Development of a Knowledge-Based Potential for Crystals of Small Organic Molecules: Calculation of Energy Surfaces for C=0···H−N Hydrogen Bonds

This paper describes the derivation of a Knowledge-Based Potential for intermolecular interactions from the statistical information stored in the Cambridge Structural Database. We develop a statistical mechanical method that relates the occurrences of intermolecular contacts in the database to their energies. Our approach allows us to quantify (in the form of energy) the geometrical preferences of interactions. We use our method to construct energy maps for a hydrogen bond between carbonyl oxygen and amino hydrogen. Our results demonstrate high orientational selectivity of this type of hydrogen bonding.