Shotgun crystal structure prediction using machine-learned formation energies
Abstract Stable or metastable crystal structures of assembled atoms can be predicted by finding the global or local minima of the energy surface within a broad space of atomic configurations. Generally, this requires repeated first-principles energy calculations, which is often impractical for large...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Nature Portfolio
2024-12-01
|
| Series: | npj Computational Materials |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41524-024-01471-8 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Abstract Stable or metastable crystal structures of assembled atoms can be predicted by finding the global or local minima of the energy surface within a broad space of atomic configurations. Generally, this requires repeated first-principles energy calculations, which is often impractical for large crystalline systems. Here, we present significant progress toward solving the crystal structure prediction problem: we performed noniterative, single-shot screening using a large library of virtually created crystal structures with a machine-learning energy predictor. This shotgun method (ShotgunCSP) has two key technical components: transfer learning for accurate energy prediction of pre-relaxed crystalline states, and two generative models based on element substitution and symmetry-restricted structure generation to produce promising and diverse crystal structures. First-principles calculations were performed only to generate the training samples and to refine a few selected pre-relaxed crystal structures. The ShotunCSP method is less computationally intensive than conventional methods and exhibits exceptional prediction accuracy, reaching 93.3% in benchmark tests with 90 different crystal structures. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2057-3960 |