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Central in a variational implicit-solvent description of biomolecular solvation is an effective free-energy functional of the solute atomic positions and the solute-solvent interface (i.e., the dielectric boundary). The free-energy functional couples together the solute molecular mechanical interaction energy, the solute-solvent interfacial energy, the solute-solvent van der Waals interaction energy, and the electrostatic energy. In recent years, the sharp-interface version of the variational implicit-solvent model has been developed and used for numerical computations of molecular solvation. In this work, we propose a diffuse-interface version of the variational implicit-solvent model with solute molecular mechanics. We also analyze both the sharp-interface and diffuse-interface models. We prove the existence of free-energy minimizers and obtain their bounds. We also prove the convergence of the diffuse-interface model to the sharp-interface model in the sense of Γ-convergence. We further discuss properties of sharp-interface free-energy minimizers, the boundary conditions and the coupling of the Poisson-Boltzmann equation in the diffuse-interface model, and the convergence of forces from diffuse-interface to sharp-interface descriptions. Our analysis relies on the previous works on the problem of minimizing surface areas and on our observations on the coupling between solute molecular mechanical interactions with the continuum solvent. Our studies justify rigorously the self consistency of the proposed diffuse-interface variational models of implicit solvation.

Variational Implicit Solvation with Solute Molecular Mechanics: From Diffuse-Interface to Sharp-Interface Models