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University of Cambridge

Diamond Energy - A systematic conformation searching method

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Fully understanding the properties of molecules requires a good knowledge of all low-energy conformations. A python program, Diamond Energy, was developed based on an assumption that the structures of local minima are similar to a diamond lattice. These conformers could be found by calculations with integer arithmetic and evaluated with simple energy equations. Both of these should speed up systematic searching. Test results on alkane showed that Diamond Energy was able to do systematic conformational searching for acyclic alkanes exhaustively, accurately and very fast. The scope of the program’s application was extended beyond acyclic alkanes to include six-membered rings, and then further extended to include saccharides. This extension was facilitated by the development of an automatic pipeline for searching suitable energy evaluation parameters when introducing new atom types. Finally, using the large quantity of data generated by the Diamond Energy test process, a machine learning pipeline was applied and fed with Diamond Energy data. This made it possible to explore the geometry distribution of diamond lattice framework and help to improve the conformational searching process.

Degree

thesis:*
Name dc:type.qualificationname
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
Doctoral
Grantor dc:publisher.institution
University of Cambridge
Year dc:date.issued
2024

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Wei, Mengman
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Goodman, Jonathan

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Language dc:language
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
DOI dc:identifier.doi
https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109200
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/369353

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Cambridge University
Base URL
api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Wei, Mengman. Diamond Energy - A systematic conformation searching method. Doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2024. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109200