Khadga Jung Karki, Susruta Samanta, and Danilo Roccatano*

J. Phys. Chem. B, August 2016

DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcb.6b06055

Astaxanthin (AXT) is a reference model of xanthophyll carotenoids, which is used in medicine and food industry, and has potential applications in nanotechnology. Because of its importance, there is a great interest in understanding its molecular properties and aggregation mechanism in water and mixed solvents. In this paper, we report a novel model of AXT for molecular dynamics simulation.

The model is used to estimate different properties of the molecule in pure solutions and in water/ethanol mixtures. The calculated diffusion coefficients of AXT in pure water and ethanol are (3.22 +/- 0.01) 10^{-6} cm^{2}s^{-1} and (2.7+/-0.4) 10^{-6} cm^{2}s^{-1}, respectively. Our simulations also show that the content of water plays a clear effect on the morphology of the AXT aggregation in water/ethanol mixture. In up to 75% (v/v) water concentration, loosely connected network…