Recent work by others has shown that the densities of C,H,N,O molecular crystals are, in many instances, given quite well by the formula M/V_m, in which M is the molecular mass and V_m is the volume of the isolated gas phase molecule that is enclosed by the 0.001 au contour of its electronic density. About 41% of the predictions were in error by less than 0.030 g/cm³, and 63% by less than 0.050 g/cm³. However, this leaves more than one-third of the compounds with errors greater than 0.050 g/cm³, or in some instances, 0.100 g/cm³. This may indicate that intermolecular interactions within the crystal are not being adequately taken into account in these cases. Accordingly, the effectiveness of including a second term that reflects the strengths, variabilities and degree of balance of the positive and negative electrostatic potentials computed on the surfaces of the isolated molecules, has been included. The database was selected such that half of the densities predicted by M/V_m had errors larger than 0.050 g/cm³. The introduction of the electrostatic interaction correction produced a marked improvement. Overall, 78% of the predictions are within 0.050 g/cm³ of experiment, with 50% within 0.030 g/cm³. Among those that originally all had errors larger than 0.050 g/cm³, 67% are now less. The reasons for the better performance of the dual-variable formula are analysed.

In recent years, there has been considerable interest in predicting the crystal densities of both molecular and ionic energetic compounds using the computed volumes V_m of the isolated gas phase molecules or ions. The surfaces enclosing the volumes are taken to be the 0.001 au (electrons/bohr³) contours of the molecules’ and ions’ electronic densities. For molecular solids, it is known that the ratio M/V_m (M = molecular mass) gives densities that are overall reasonably good, although they can be markedly improved by introduction of an electrostatic interaction correction term. For ionic solids, the subject of this paper, the ratio M/V_m (M = formula unit mass) is not nearly as effective; V_m tends to be significantly larger than the effective volumes of the ions in the crystal, leading to underestimated densities, with an average absolute error of 0.089 g/cm³. The correction term that improves molecular crystal densities is not applicable in the case of ionic solids; however we show, for a database of 25 compounds plus five test cases, that an average absolute error of 0.033 g/cm³ can be achieved by combining M/V_m with terms involving the average positive and negative potentials and areas on the cationic and anionic surfaces. The root-mean-square error is 0.040 g/cm³.