Transferable Hirshfeld atom model for rapid evaluation of aspherical atomic form factors

A databank of atomic densities calculated using Hirshfeld partition has been developed which allows for refinement with similar accuracy to Hirshfeld atom refinement without the need for time-consuming wavefunction calculations.

Form factors based on aspherical models of atomic electron density have brought great improvement in the accuracies of hydrogen atom parameters derived from X-ray crystal structure refinement. Today, two main groups of such models are available, the banks of transferable atomic densities parametrized using the Hansen–Coppens multipole model which allows for rapid evaluation of atomic form factors and Hirshfeld atom refinement (HAR)-related methods which are usually more accurate but also slower. In this work, a model that combines the ideas utilized in the two approaches is tested. It uses atomic electron densities based on Hirshfeld partitions of electron densities, which are precalculated and stored in a databank. This model was also applied during the refinement of the structures of five small molecules. A comparison of the resulting hydrogen atom parameters with those derived from neutron diffraction data indicates that they are more accurate than those obtained with the Hansen–Coppens based databank, and only slightly less accurate than those obtained with a version of HAR that neglects the crystal environment. The advantage of using HAR becomes more noticeable when the effects of the environment are included. To speed up calculations, atomic densities were represented by multipole expansion with spherical harmonics up to l = 7, which used numerical radial functions (a different approach to that applied in the Hansen–Coppens model). Calculations of atomic form factors for the small protein crambin (at 0.73 Å resolution) took only 68 s using 12 CPU cores.