Probing the conformational energetics of alkyl thiols on gold surfaces by means of a morphing/steering non-equilibrium tool

In this work we show that a non-equilibrium statistical tool based on Jarzynski's equality (JE) can be applied to achieve a sufficiently accurate mapping of the torsion free energy, bond-by-bond, for an alkyl thiol ligand tethered to a gold surface and sensing the presence of the surrounding cluster of similar chains. The strength of our approach is the employment of a strategy to let grow the internal energetics of the whole system (namely, the "energy morphing" stage recently presented by us in J. Comput. Chem., 2014, 35, 1865-1881) before initiating the rotational steering, which yields accurate results in terms of statistical uncertainties and bias on the free energy profiles. The work is mainly methodological and illustrates the feasibility of this kind of inspection on nanoscale molecular clusters with conformational flexibility. The outcomes for the archetype of self-assembled-monolayers considered here, a regular pattern of 10-carbon alkyl thiols on an ideal gold surface, give information on the conformational mobility of the ligands. Notably, such information is unlikely to be obtained by means of standard equilibrium techniques or by conventional molecular dynamics simulations.