Elucidating the structures and cooperative binding mechanism of cesium salts to the multitopic ion-pair receptor through density functional theory calculations.

Designing new and innovative receptors for the selective binding of radionuclides is central to nuclear waste management processes. Recently, a new multi-topic ion-pair receptor was reported which binds a variety of cesium salts. Due to the large size of the receptor, quantum chemical calculations on the full ion-pair receptors are restricted, thus the binding mechanisms are not well understood at the molecular level. We have assessed the binding strengths of various cesium salts to the recently synthesized multi-topic ion-pair receptor molecule using density functional theory based calculations. Our calculations predict that the binding of cesium salts to the receptor predominantly occurs via the cooperative binding mechanism. Cesium and the anion synergistically assist each other to bind favorably inside the receptor. Energy decomposition analysis on the ion-pair complexes shows that the Cs salts are bound to the receptor mainly through electrostatic interactions with small contribution from covalent interactions for large ionic radius anions. Further, QTAIM analysis characterizes the importance of different inter-molecular interactions between the ions and the receptor inside the ion-pair complexes. The role of the crystallographic solvent molecule contributes significantly by ~10 kcal mol(-1) to the overall binding affinities which is quite significant. Further, unlike the recent molecular mechanics (MM) calculations, our calculated binding affinity trends for various Cs ion-pair complexes (CsF, CsCl and CsNO3) are now in excellent agreement with the experimental binding affinity trends.