Charge-density analysis and electrostatic properties of 2-carboxy-4-methylanilinium chloride monohydrate obtained using a multipolar and a spherical-charges model

The new crystal structure of 2-carboxy-4-methylanilinium chloride monohydrate was determined by X-ray diffraction and refined using three different electron-density models. In the first model, the ELMAM2 multipolar electron-density database was transferred to the molecule. Theoretical structure factors were also computed from periodic density functional theory calculations and yielded, after multipolar-atoms refinement, the second charge-density model. An alternative electron-density modelling, based on spherical atoms and additional charges on the covalent bonds and electron lone-pair sites, was used in the third model in the refinement versus the theoretical data. The crystallographic refinements, structural properties, electron-density distributions and molecular electrostatic potentials obtained from the different charge-density models were compared. As the number of variables refined in the different models is the same, the R factor is a good indicator of refinement quality. The R factor is best for multipolar modelling, presumably because of the greater flexibility and larger number of parameters to model the electron density compared to the spherical-charges model. The electrostatic potentials around the molecule show a high correlation coefficient between the three models.