Classical Polarizable Force Field to Study Hydrated Hectorite: Optimization on DFT Calculations and Validation against XRD Data

R Hande and V Ramothe and S Tesson and B Dazas and E Ferrage and B Lanson and M Salanne and B Rotenberg and V Marry, MINERALS, 8, 205 (2018).

DOI: 10.3390/min8050205

Following our previous works on dioctahedral clays, we extend the classical Polarizable Ion Model (PIM) to trioctahedral clays, by considering dry Na-, Cs-, Ca- and Sr-hectorites as well as hydrated Na- hectorite. The parameters of the force field are determined by optimizing the atomic forces and dipoles on density functional theory calculations. The simulation results are validated by comparison with experimental X-ray diffraction (XRD) data. The XRD patterns calculated from classical molecular dynamics simulations performed with the PIM force field are in very good agreement with experimental results. In the bihydrated state, the less structured electronic density profile obtained with PIM compared to the one from the state-of-the-art non- polarizable force field clayFF explains the slightly better agreement between the PIM results and experiments.

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