Polarizable continuum model

Abstract The polarizable continuum model (PCM) is a computational method originally formulated 30 years ago but still today it represents one of the most successful examples among continuum solvation models. Such a success is mainly because of the continuous improvements, both in terms of computational efficiency and generality, made by all the people involved in the PCM project. The result of these efforts is that nowadays, PCM, with all its different variants, is the default choice in many computational codes to couple a quantum–mechanical (QM) description of a molecular system with a continuum description of the environment. In this review, a brief presentation of the main methodological and computational…