Tutorial example on crystal-structure prediction I: The case of octet-binary zincblende-vs.-rocksalt semiconductors
Introduction
In this tutorial we present a tool for predicting the crystal structure of octet binary compounds, by using a set of descriptive parameters (a descriptor) based on free-atom data of the atomic species constituting the binary material.
In this example, we address only Rocksalt (RS) and Zincblende (ZB) crystal structures, that are the most common for the material class of octet binaries. Specifically, the tool predicts the difference in total energy between RS and ZB equilibrated structures (i.e., each structure is relaxed to its local minimum).
The prediction of RS vs ZB structure from a simple descriptor has a notable history in materials science [1-7], where descriptors were designed by chemically/physically-inspired intuition. The tool presented here allows for the machine-learning-aided automatic discovery of a descriptor and a model for the prediction of the difference in energy between RS and ZB for 82 octet binary materials.
The tool is based on Compressed-sensing (LASSO performed on a tailor-made feature space, followed by L0-regularized minimization, click here for more info on the LASSO+L0 method), as introduced in:
"Big Data of Materials Science: Critical Role of the Descriptor". L. M. Ghiringhelli, J. Vybiral, S. V. Levchenko, C. Draxl, and M. Scheffler Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 105503 (2015) (Click here for the free access pdf)
By running the tutorial with the default setting, the results of the Phys. Rev. Lett. 2015 can be recovered. In particular, by clicking on “View interactive 2D plot”, an interactive structure-map (a chart where different structures are located in different regions of a low-dimensional representation, here two-dimensional) will be opened in a new tab, similar to the figure below (an extended version of Fig. 2 in PRL 2015):
In this map the octet binaries are located via the descriptor found by our LASSO+L0 approach. The descriptor is based purely on free-atom data, namely radii of the s and p valence orbitals (rs and rp) of the atomic species and their Ionization Potential and Electron Affinity (IP and EA). Materials in the red (blue) region crystallize preferably in the zincblende (rocksalt) structure. The distance to the green line is proportional to the difference in energy between the two structures. In the interactive plot accessible at the end of the learning performed by the present tool, one can obtain information on the materials by hovering and clicking on the data points.
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