Inversion of diffraction data for amorphous materials

The general and practical inversion of diffraction data-producing a computer model correctly representing the material explored - is an important unsolved problem for disordered materials. Such modeling should proceed by using our full knowledge base, both from experiment and theory. In this paper, we describe a robust method to jointly exploit the power of ab initio atomistic simulation along with the information carried by diffraction data. The method is applied to two very different systems: amorphous silicon and two compositions of a solid electrolyte memory material silver-doped GeSe3 . The technique is easy to implement, is faster and yields results much improved over conventional simulation methods for the materials explored. By direct calculation, we show that the method works for both poor and excellent glass forming materials. It offers a means to add a priori information in first principles modeling of materials, and represents a significant step toward the computational design of non-crystalline materials using accurate interatomic interactions and experimental information

Information-Driven Inverse Approach to Disordered Solids: Applications to Amorphous Silicon

© Physical Review Materials Publisher\u27s Versio

Small-Angle X-Ray Scattering in Amorphous Silicon: A Computational Study

We present a computational study of small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) in amorphous silicon (α-Si) with particular emphasis on the morphology and microstructure of voids. The relationship between the scattering intensity in SAXS and the three-dimensional structure of nanoscale inhomogeneities or voids is addressed by generating large high-quality (α-Si networks with 0.1%–0.3% volume concentration of voids, as observed in experiments using SAXS and positron annihilation spectroscopy. A systematic study of the variation of the scattering intensity in the small-angle scattering region with the size, shape, number density, and the spatial distribution of the voids in the networks is presented. Our results suggest that the scattering intensity in the small-angle region is particularly sensitive to the size and the total volume fraction of the voids, but the effect of the geometry or shape of the voids is less pronounced in the intensity profiles. A comparison of the average size of the voids obtained from the simulated values of the intensity, using the Guinier approximation and Kratky plots, with that of the same from the spatial distribution of the atoms in the vicinity of void surfaces is presented

Ab initio{\it Ab \: initio} density-functional studies of 13-atom Cu and Ag clusters

The putative ground-state structures of 13-atom Cu and Ag clusters have been studied using ${\it ab \: initio}$ molecular-dynamics (AIMD) simulations based on the density-functional theory (DFT). An ensemble of low-energy configurations, collected along the AIMD trajectory and optimized to nearest local minimum-energy configurations, were studied. An analysis of the results indicates the existence of low-symmetric bilayer structures as strong candidates for the putative ground-state structure of Cu$_{13}$ and Ag$_{13}$ clusters. These bilayer structures are markedly different from a buckled bi-planar (BBP) configuration and energetically favorable, by about 0.4$-$0.5 eV, than the latter proposed earlier by others. Our study reveals that the structure of the resulting putative global-minimum configuration is essentially independent of the nature of basis functions (i.e., plane waves versus pseudoatomic orbitals) employed in the calculations, for a given exchange-correlation functional. The structural configurations obtained from plane-wave-based DFT calculations show a slightly tighter or dense first-shell of Cu and Ag atoms than those from local-basis functions. A comparison of our results with recent full-potential DFT simulations is presented.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure