Fragments-in-fragments method for efficient and reliable estimates of individual hydrogen bond energies in large molecular clusters

The knowledge of individual hydrogen bond (HB) strength in molecular clusters is indispensable to get insights into the bulk properties of condensed systems. Recently, we have developed the molecular tailoring approach based (MTA-based) method for the estimation of individual HB energy in molecular clusters. However, the direct use of this MTA-based method to large molecular clusters becomes progressively difficult with the increase in the size of a cluster. To overcome this caveat, herein, we propose the use of linear scaling method (such as the original MTA method) for the estimation of single-point (SP) energies of large-sized parent molecular cluster and their respective fragments. Because the fragments of the MTA-based method, for the estimation of HB energy, are further fragmented, this proposed strategy is called as Fragments-in-Fragments (Frags-in-Frags) method. The SP energies of fragments and parent cluster calculated by the Frags-in-Frags approach were utilized to estimate the individual HB energy. The estimated individual HB energies, in various molecular clusters, by Frags-in-Frags method are found to be in excellent linear agreement with their MTA-based counterparts (R-2 = 0.9975 of 348 data points). The difference being less than 0.5 kcal/mol in most of the cases. Furthermore, RMSD is 0.43 kcal/mol, MAE is 0.33 kcal/mol, and the standard deviation is 0.44 kcal/mol. Importantly, the Frags-in-Frags method not only enables the reliable estimation of HB energy in large molecular clusters but also requires less computational time and can be possible even with off-the-shelf hardware.