An early application of the DE potential has been to the hydration of divalent metal ions, using a three-point water model (named DE-TIP3P) . Parameter sweeps (for α, β , ε and r m ) were performed with the goal of reproducing experimental water density and O-O radial distribution functions, and subsequently hydration free energies of ions in the obtained water model. The resulting DE force field performed better than a commonly-used LJ model , and comparably to a 12-6-4 nonbonded potential and an alternative model for metals that includes dummy ions , thus demonstrating the flexibility of the functional form.