Raman Optical Activity of N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine in Water and in Methanol: The "Clusters-in-a-Liquid" Model and ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Raman and Raman Optical Activity (ROA) spectra of N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NALC), a flexible chiral molecule, were measured in water and in methanol to evaluate the solvent effects. Two different solvation approaches, that is, the DFT based "clusters-in-a-liquid" solvent model and the ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations, were applied to simulate the Raman and ROA spectra. Systematic conformational searches were carried out using a recently developed conformational searching tool, CREST, with the inclusion of polarizable continuum model of water and of methanol. The CREST candidates of NALC and the NALC-solvent complexes were re-optimized and their Raman and ROA simulations were done at the B3LYP-D3BJ/def2-TZVP and the B3LYP-aug-cc-pVDZ//cc-pVTZ levels. Also, AIMD simulations, which includes some anharmonic effects and all intermolecular interactions in solution, were performed. By empirically weighting the computed Raman and ROA spectra of each conformer, good agreements with the experimental data were achieved with both approaches, while AIMD offered some improvements in the carbonyl and in the low wavenumber regions over the static DFT approach. The pros and cons of these two different approaches for accounting the solvent effects on Raman and ROA of this flexible chiral system will also be discussed.