1,4-INTERACTIONS IN MOLECULAR MECHANICS CALCULATIONS OF ETHERS

Van der Waals and electrostatic interactions are found to be insufficient for the calculation of conformational energies of ethers by molecular mechanics. Low order torsional potential functions must be added for the potential about C-O bonds. A onefold term necessary for the CCOC-fragment is interpreted to be a substitute for gauche interactions present in CCCC-, but missing in CCOC-fragments. For the COCO fragment the anomeric effect must be included explicitly as another torsional energy term, but no such term is required to stabilize the gauche conformation for OCCO. With the resulting ether force field the geometries and energies of model compounds, many of them 1,3-dioxanes, are calculated with good accuracy. © 1979.