Chemical Physics Letters 628 (2015) 3034

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Chemical Physics Letters

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cplett

Water exchange dynamics around H3 O+ and OH ions

Santanu Roy, Liem X. Dang
Physical Sciences Division, Pacic Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99354, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 2 February 2015
In nal form 3 April 2015
Available online 10 April 2015

a b s t r a c t
In this letter, we report the rst computer simulation of the dynamics of water exchanging between
the rst and second solvation shells of H3 O+ . Employing different rate theories for chemical reactions such as the transition state theory, the GroteHynes theory, the reactive ux method, and the
ImpeyMaddenMcDonald method, we calculate the solvent exchange rates from molecular dynamics
simulations that account for explicit polarization effects. In addition, we also study water exchanges
around OH and nd that the corresponding time scale is much smaller than that for H3 O+ .
2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.

1. Introduction
The amphiprotic nature of water leads to its autoionization. A
water molecule as an acid donates a proton to a neighboring water
molecule acting as a base, creating two molecular ions H3 O+ and
OH [1]. However, this event is rare, and recombination occurs
quickly because of the strong acidic and basic nature of H3 O+ and
OH ions, respectively [2]. The dynamics of these ions in water
have indispensable roles in many chemical and biological processes
related to proton transfer [35]. A proton in water is known to form
two structures [6,7]. In the rst structure, H3 O+ forms strong hydrogen bonds with three neighboring water molecules, resulting in the
H3 O+ (H2 O)3 structure. In the second structure, one of the protons
of H3 O+ migrates along the hydrogen bond and is shared between
two water molecules (H2 O H H2 O). This structure is called the
Zundel structure [8]. Hydration of OH leads to tri-coordinated
OH (H2 O)3 and hyper-coordinated OH (H2 O)4 structures [9].
Although the hydration structure around a proton and a hydroxide ion is understood, the dynamics of water hydrating them is less
clear. It is essential to understand the dynamics of water exchanging between different solvation shells of a proton or a hydroxide ion,
as that can be an inuencing factor in proton or hydroxide diffusion in water and other biological systems [1014]. To this end, we
wish to reveal the water exchange dynamics around these ions by
employing molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. However, simulating a proton in water is complicated and requires accurate
but computationally expensive (i.e., time consuming) semiclassical
and quantum mechanical (SC and QM) methods such as Empirical Valence Bond [15,16], Car-Parrinello MD [17], Centroid MD

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (L.X. Dang).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cplett.2015.04.002
0009-2614/ 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.

[18], Path Integral MD [19], and Ring Polymer MD [20]. A classical MD simulation can minimize this computational cost, but with
a lesser accuracy of the ionwater interaction. This accuracy can be
improved by explicitly accounting for polarization effects on this
interaction. In this letter, we treat a proton in the H3 O+ form and
investigate water exchange dynamics between its rst and second
solvation shells using classical MD simulation with a polarizable
potential model [2124]. We follow a similar protocol in our investigation of the OH ion [23,25]. In this study, we assumed that the
proton-hopping rate is much faster than the water exchange rate
between the solvation shells of these ions; therefore, these time
scales can be separated. If the proton-hopping mechanism were
taken into account in our molecular model, we would expect that
the water exchange rate between the solvation shells of these ions
would be increased and the corresponding residence times would
be decreased. The reason for this expectation is that the solvation
structures around these ions are more exible and more mobile.
We combine rate theories of chemical reactions with MD simulations. Here, the reactants are H3 O+ (OH ) and water molecules
bound to it through electrostatics and hydrogen-bonding in the rst
solvation shell. Exchange of a bound water with a water molecule
from the second solvation shell leads to the products, which simply
can be described by the following equation:
X(H2 O1st )n + H2 O2nd = X(H2 O1st )n 1 H2 O2nd + H2 O1st ,
O+

OH .

O1st

O2nd

(1)

where X is either H3
or
H2
and H2
are the water
molecules in the rst and second solvation shells. Experimental
techniques such nuclear magnetic resonance [26,27], quasi-elastic
neutron scattering spectroscopy [28,29], and the ligand substitution approach are used to measure solvent exchange rates
around ions [30]. However, as the reactants and products are
identical, it is challenging to examine the solvent exchange process experimentally. On the other hand, MD simulations enable

S. Roy, L.X. Dang / Chemical Physics Letters 628 (2015) 3034

Table 1
Polarizable force eld parameters for water, H3 O+ , and OH . The terms  and 
are the LennardJones parameters, q is the atomic charge, and is the molecular
polarizability.
Atom type
OW
HW
MW
O (H3 O+ )
H (H3 O+ )
O (OH )
H (OH )


(kcal/mol)

q
(e)

(3 )

3.2340
0.0000
0.0000
3.2340
0.0000
3.2215
0.0000

0.1825
0.0000
0.0000
0.1475
0.0000
0.1825
0.0000

0.0000
0.5190
1.0380
0.4166
0.4722
1.2000
0.2000

0.0000
0.0000
1.4400
0.9800
0.0000
2.3000
0.0000

identication of each individual molecule and provide an atomiclevel description of molecular structure and dynamics. We employ
transition state theory (TST) [3133], GroteHynes (GH) theory [3336], the reactive-ux (RF) method [31,34,37], and the
ImpeyMaddenMcDonald (IMM) method [38] to compute time
scales of H2 O1st and H2 O2nd exchange (Eq. (1)) around H3 O+ (OH )
from MD simulations. Examining this exchange dynamics with four
different methods will not only allow us to gain a deep insight into
the problem, but also will help us to determine the quality and
applicability of these methods.
2. Methods and simulations
To employ the TST, GH, RF, and IMM methods, we require having priory knowledge of potential of mean force (PMF) between
H3 O+ (OH ) and a water molecule in the presence of the solvent
water. Water exchange reaction pathways can be multidimensional
and different for different ions. Assuming that the ionwater center of mass (COM) separation is a suitable reaction coordinate, we
obtained the PMF along this coordinate from MD simulations as
discussed below.
To perform MD simulations of the H3 O+ water and OH water
systems, a modied version of AMBER was used, incorporating the polarizable force eld parameters (Table 1) [2125]. The
H3 O+ water (OH water) system comprised of a cubic box of 600
water molecules and one H3 O+ (OH ) ion. The MD time step of
2 femtosecond (fs) was chosen and the long-range electrostatic
interactions were treated with the Ewald summation technique
[39]. The internal geometry of molecules was kept constrained in
the simulations using the Shake algorithm [40]. The H3 O+ water
and OH water systems were equilibrated in the NPT ensemble
at room temperature (T = 298 K) and a pressure of 1 atmosphere
(P = 1 bar). The H3 O+ water and OH water systems have the same

equilibrated average cubic box length (26.3 A).

For PMF calculations [3133], we performed MD simulations in
the NVT ensemble using equilibrated cubic boxes, xing COM separation (r = |r|) between H3 O+ (OH ) and a selected water molecule,
and sampling other degrees of freedom. A series of such simulations (each for 5 nanoseconds [ns]) with different r-values were
carried out, and the H3 O+ (OH )water mean force was calculated
using Eq. (2).
F(r) =

1
r (Fion Fwat )
2

(2)

here Fion and Fwat are the forces acting on the H3 O+ (OH ) ion and
the selected water molecule, respectively, and r (= r/|r|) is the unit
vector pointing from the ion to the water molecule. The PMF, W(r),
was obtained by numerically integrating the mean force as given
below:

W (r) =
r0

F(r  )dr  .

Water exchange rate between the rst and second solvation

shells was obtained by applying TST to the PMF as follows [3133]:
ktst =


()

(3)

31

(r ) eW (r

2

 r

dr r 2 eW (r)

r0

(4)

here r represents the position of the barrier top (transition state)

of the PMF. and  are the inverse of thermal energy (1/kB T) and
the ionwater reduced mass, respectively. The shortcoming of TST
is that it overestimates the water exchange rate (ktst ) because of the
assumption that, once the ionwater system reaches the barrier top
of its PMF from the reactant state, it goes immediately to the product state. However, it is likely that barrier recrossing can occur. The
probability of actually getting to the product state is the transmission coefcient , and therefore, the actual water exchange rate is
k = ktst . We used the GH and RF theories to determine the transmission coefcient. The GH theory [3336], assumes that the dynamics
along the reaction coordinate r in the barrier top region can be
modeled with a generalized Langevin equation as given below:


dv
(t) = Fb (t)
dt

dt  (t  )v(t t  ) + F (t).

(5)

The static potential at the barrier region is modeled with the

inverted parabola; therefore, the corresponding force has the form

Fb = b2 r. The term b is the barrier frequency, and v(t) = r(t).

The friction (t), the time correlation function of uctuating forces
( F (t) = F (t)  F (t) ) exerted by the uctuating solvent on the
effective particle of mass  (ionwater reduced mass), can be
expressed as:
(t) =

1
 F (0) F (t).
kB T

(6)

Now, the transmission coefcient employing the GH theory

(GH ) can be determined iteratively as follows:

GH = 1/

1
GH +
b

b GH t

dt (t) e

(7)

To obtain (t) and GH , we performed MD simulations of the

H3 O+ water and OH water systems xed in their transition states
for 10 ns in the NVT ensemble, saving the force F (t) every 2 fs.
The RF method is very useful for extracting the exact value of
transmission coefcient from MD trajectories [26,32,34]. From the
10-ns MD trajectory in the NVT ensembles of the H3 O+ water and
OH water systems constrained at the transition state, 2500 conformations were collected to perform RF calculations. Using these
conformations as the starting ones and releasing the constraint, MD
simulations at the NVE ensemble were performed in both backward
and forward directions for 2 ps. Then the transmission coefcient
RF (t) was obtained using the following expression [34]:

 

RF (t) =

(v.r )
(v.r )(r r )
r(t) r
r(t) r+
(v.r )
(v.r )(r r )

(8)

here v.r is the initial ionwater velocity projected along the reaction
coordinate and
(v.r ) is the Heaviside function to select MD trajectories starting with positive velocities. The term (r r ) makes
sure that the starting conformation is in the transition state. The
terms r(t) and r( t) are obtained from the forward and backward

MD trajectories, respectively. The term r = r r, where r is a

positive innitesimal quantity, ensures that RF (t) has the initial
value (at t = 0) of 1. RF (t) reaches a plateau at a long time; the
actual transmission coefcient is obtained by averaging over the
last 0.5 ps.
For the IMM method, we performed MD simulations of the
H3 O+ water and OH water systems for 5 ns in NVT ensemble, saving snapshots every 100 fs. A normalized time correlation function

32

S. Roy, L.X. Dang / Chemical Physics Letters 628 (2015) 3034

Figure 1. PMFs for the H3 O+ H2 O and OH H2 O interactions in water as the solvent.

Figure 2. A MD snapshot to show the distribution of water molecules around H3 O+
and OH ions in the CIWP and SSIWP states.

for the population of water molecules in the rst solvation shell of

H3 O+ (OH ) was calculated from the MD trajectory (Eq. (9)) [38].
Cp (t; t ) = p (ti , tf , t )/p (ti , ti , t ),ti

(9)

If a water molecule is located in the rst solvation shell at both

initial (ti ) and nal (tf ) times, p is assigned to 1, provided that,
within this time interval, the water molecule dose not leave the
shell for a continuous period of time longer than t* = 2 ps. The term
t* is introduced to account for the barrier recrossing (i.e., to ignore
the transient escapes from the rst solvation shell). The term   in
Eq. (9) represents averaging over water molecules and initial times.
Cp (t;t*) is assumed to have the exponential form exp( t/ p ), where
 p is the residence time of a water molecule obtained as follows:

p =
0

Cp (t; t )dt =

exp(t/p )dt.

(10)

3. Results and discussion

The PMFs computed for the H3 O+ water and OH water systems are depicted in Figure 1. We nd three distinct features in
the PMFs, corresponding to three different states of the systems.
The rst minimum represents the contact-ionwater-pair (CIWP)
state, the barrier top at r = r represents the transition state, and
the third feature is the solvent-separated-ionwater-pair (SSIWP)
state. In the CIWP state, the ion and the water are held in close
contact by the electrostatic forces; whereas, in the SSIWP state, the
solvent screens these forces. A couple of differences are observed
in the PMFs for the H3 O+ water and OH water systems. First,
the barrier height is larger for the H3 O+ water system than for the
OH water system, and second, the COM separation corresponding
to the transition state for the OH water system is larger than that
for the H3 O+ water system. In Table 2, we report these differences
quantitatively and conclude that H3 O+ H2 O binding is stronger
than OH H2 O binding. We found that the coordination number
for the H3 O+ water system (the number of water molecules that
bind to H3 O+ on the average in the CIWP state) is 3, which is consistent with the previously found H3 O+ (H2 O)3 structure.[6,7] The
Zundel structure (H2 O H H2 O) was not observed as our model
did not account for proton transfer.[8] The coordination number
for the OH water system is 5, which is overestimated in comparison with the previous studies (OH (H2 O)4 and OH (H2 O)3 ).[9]
In Figure 2, we have pictorially represented the CIWP and SSIWP
states to clarify the distribution of water molecules around H3 O+
and OH ions. Using the TST method (Eq. (4)), the transition rate
between these two states turns out to be slower for the H3 O+ water
system than for the OH water system. The corresponding time
scales ( tst = 1/ktst ) are reported in Table 2.

Figure 3. Time-dependent friction for the H3 O+ water and OH water systems

computed using the GH theory.

As mentioned earlier, these TST rates do not display the complete picture of water exchange dynamics. Therefore, we corrected
these rates by multiplying with transmission coefcients obtained
from the GH and RF calculations. In the GH method, we required to
obtain the friction (t) to determine the transmission coefcient.
(t), as depicted in Figure 3, has two distinguishable components
for both the H3 O+ water and OH water systems: (1) a rapid initial drop around 5060 fs and (2) a slow decay on the picosecond
time scale. However, it is clear that the H3 O+ water system experiences larger friction than the OH water system. We also found
that the barrier frequency for the H3 O+ water system (39 ps1 ) is
larger than that for the OH water system (21 ps1 ). The transmission coefcients (GH ) are 2.0 103 and 3.0 102 , respectively,
for the H3 O+ water and OH water systems. These values are too
low, which means that the CIWP state is extremely stable and transition to the SSIWP state rarely occurs. The term  GH in Table 2 is
the water exchange time scale obtained using the GH theory, which
is sub-nanosecond for the H3 O+ water system and is an order of
magnitude smaller for the OH water system.
The time-dependent transmission coefcient obtained using
the RF method RF (t) rapidly decays to a plateau for both the
H3 O+ water and OH water systems (Fig. 4). By averaging over the
last 0.5 ps, we nd the actual transmission coefcient: 1.5 102
for the H3 O+ water system and 2.4 102 for the OH water system. Again, these transmission coefcients are very small, resulting
in slow water-exchange time scales ( RF in Table 2) and the
exchanges occur faster around OH than around H3 O+ .

S. Roy, L.X. Dang / Chemical Physics Letters 628 (2015) 3034

33

Table 2
Barrier positions and heights of the PMFs (Fig. 1) for the H3 O+ water and OH water systems and time scales of water exchange around H3 O+ and OH ions.
Systems

Barrier height (kcal/mol)

r
()

 tst
(ps)

 GH
(ps)

 RF
(ps)

p
(ps)

H3 O+ water
OH water

1.7
1.1

2.9
3.2

1.4
0.9

658
39

95
61

206
35

exchange dynamics between the rst and the second solvation

shells is faster for the OH water system than for the H3 O+ water
system.
4. Conclusion

Figure 4. Time-dependent transmission coefcient for the H3 O+ water and

OH water systems obtained from the RF method.

Finally, using the IMM method we calculated the residence time

p of a water molecule in the rst solvation shell of H3 O+ and OH
from the normalized time correlation function Cp (t; t* ) (Eqs. (9)
and (10)). As depicted in Figure 5, the approximation that Cp (t; t* )
has an exponential form turns out to be valid for both the systems.
Cp (t; t* ) decays much faster for the OH water system (gets close
to zero at t 500 ps) than for the H3 O+ water system (gets close to
zero at t > 1 ns). We nd from Eq. (10) that,  p (given in Table 2) is
one order of magnitude smaller for the OH water system than for
the H3 O+ water system. IMM is qualitatively consistent with other
methods.
From the quantitative comparison between  GH ,  GH , and  p
(Table 2), we nd signicant discrepancies between them. The RF
method provides with the exact and correct value for the water
exchange time scale, therefore,  GH , and  p are overestimated for
the H3 O+ water system and are underestimated for the OH water
system. The errors for the GH results may arise from the assumption that the barrier top of a PMF is an inverted parabola. In the case
of the IMM method, the choice of t* may introduce artifacts in the
results. However, all the results qualitatively agree that the water

We demonstrated the rst computer simulation of the exchange

dynamics of hydrating water around H3 O+ and OH ions. Using
polarizable force eld parameters in MD simulation and employing
classical rate theories of chemical reactions, we examined water
exchange process between the rst and second solvation shells.
We calculated the water exchange rates using TST and weighted
them with the transmission coefcients determined by the GH and
RF methods. We found that the water exchange dynamics around
H3 O+ (time scale of 100 ps) is much slower than OH (time scale of
50 ps). We also calculated the residence time of a water molecule
in the rst solvation shell of H3 O+ and OH using the IMM method;
these results are qualitatively in agreement with the GH and RF
results.
We kept our investigation simple, classical, and at the fundamental level. Due to lower computational costs, we were able of
explore most of the conguration space of water molecules distributed around H3 O+ and OH ions (for example, see Fig. 2),
determining the water exchange time scales around these ions.
Using this information as a reference, in the future, it will be
interesting to employ SC and QM methods for more accurate understanding of the water exchange process. These methods will allow
one to simulate a proton in water and examine proton transfer
from H3 O+ to a neighboring water molecule. Then, one can gain
insights into how proton transfer can inuence the water exchange
dynamics between the solvation shells of a proton. Exploring multidimensional reaction coordinates will be necessary for such an
investigation. In this letter, we focus only on the kinetics of water
exchange between the rst and second solvation shells of H3 O+ and
OH and defer other calculations of other properties such that the
relative mobility and structure of the two ions in water. Our future
work will include the comparison between the relative mobility
of hydronium and hydroxide with the water exchange dynamics
around these ions.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the US Department of Energy, Ofce
of Science, Ofce of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences. The calculations were carried
out using computer resources provided by the Ofce of Basic Energy
Sciences.
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Figure 5. Normalized time-correlation function to determine the residence time of

a water molecule in the rst hydration shell of H3 O+ and OH ions.

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