A structure–activity relationship study of the toxicity of ionic liquids using an adapted Ferreira–Kiralj hydrophobicity parameter

Abstract

The Ferreira–Kiralj hydrophobicity parameter W_c is a number fraction of hydrophobic carbon atoms and can be regarded as a constitutional descriptor since its calculation depends only on the number of polar and nonpolar carbons in a compound. Hydrophobicity is important to the toxicity of ionic liquids (ILs), which are salts by nature. Herein, a descriptor for this property was calculated using a simple adaptation of the type of polar carbon atoms included (W_cAdap) to explore the possibility of its use in quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) studies of ILs. The resulting model was tested using a database of ILs with toxicity against the Leukemia rat cell line IPC-81. Two other models were constructed using Crippen log P and Mannhold log P descriptors, which are both available in the free program PaDEL. The use of W_cAdap led to a better and more indicative model. Thus, W_cAdap may be a suitable molecular descriptor for the hydrophobicity of ILs in QSAR studies.