Prediction of organic homolytic bond dissociation enthalpies at near chemical accuracy with sub-second computational cost

Nat Commun. 2020 May 11;11(1):2328. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-16201-z.

Abstract

Bond dissociation enthalpies (BDEs) of organic molecules play a fundamental role in determining chemical reactivity and selectivity. However, BDE computations at sufficiently high levels of quantum mechanical theory require substantial computing resources. In this paper, we develop a machine learning model capable of accurately predicting BDEs for organic molecules in a fraction of a second. We perform automated density functional theory (DFT) calculations at the M06-2X/def2-TZVP level of theory for 42,577 small organic molecules, resulting in 290,664 BDEs. A graph neural network trained on a subset of these results achieves a mean absolute error of 0.58 kcal mol-1 (vs DFT) for BDEs of unseen molecules. We further demonstrate the model on two applications: first, we rapidly and accurately predict major sites of hydrogen abstraction in the metabolism of drug-like molecules, and second, we determine the dominant molecular fragmentation pathways during soot formation.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Associated data

  • figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.10248932