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Results for “Strain functionals molecular dynamics grain boundaries”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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The effect of grain boundary yield and disconnections on grain boundary fracture strength

During high-temperature interfacial strain, e.g., creep or sintering, grain boundaries will sample non-equilibrium states associated with the non-equilibrium disconnections that mediate strain. This work tests the hypothesis that those non-equilibrium states should affect the mechanical properties of the grain boundary. High-temperature bicrystal tensile strain experiments performed on Sc-doped ZrO 2 as a function of strain rate enable the observation of fracture before and after grain boundary yield. Yielded boundaries exhibit a median fracture strength ≈ 50 % lower than those that did not yield. Molecular dynamics simulations performed on boundaries with and without interstitial-type disconnection loops indicate that the presence of those loops reduce the failure stress.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE

Applications of Nickelate perovskites for neuromorphic computing from electronic structure and Machine Learning

While the limit of Moore's law is presently being reached with current microelectronic technologies, we need to develop new paradigms that overcome this limitation. In that respect, neuromorphic computing is a concept that emulates the neural behavior and response of the human brain, and it has been recognized as a promising alternative approach. In this research project, we will perform multi-fidelity scale bridging to explore the potential use of materials with metal to insulator transition for neuromorphic applications. In particular, rare earth nickelates are promising for such purposes, as the transition in these materials is quite sensitive to a broad set of different external stimuli. Our multi-fidelity approach will bridge the high-fidelity electronic structure calculations with classical potentials. We will bridge dynamical mean field theory with a classical atomistic representation via a deep learning force field. The neural network is trained with energies, charges, and forces obtained by accurate electronic structure theories based on Dynamical Mean Field Theory. The configurational space is generated from known crystal phases, ab initio molecular dynamics with exchange-correlation functionals corrected with the Hubbard model, disordered phases with different concentrations of oxygen vacancies, and nonsymmetrical positions and induced strain by grain interfaces or contact with a substrate. Strategies to train the model with a reduced number of training examples are obtained from active learning methods, and new structures for improving the learning process are generated by using machine learning autoencoders. This classical potential will be validated through a diversity of electronic structure methods and represents an important step to combine the flexibility and accuracy of first-principles with the speed of classical potentials. The generated multi-fidelity surrogate model will be used to understand the role of strain, oxygen vacancies, proton doping, the variation of the crystal phase, substrate effects, vibrational effects as the octahedral rotation, grain boundaries and defect effects on the response of a Metal to Insulator Transition (MIT) in correlated materials. Long time and large-scale simulations will help understand the role of different stimuli to control the hysteresis of the MIT, as it has been experimentally suggested. Selected configurations will be analyzed with higher-level theories to provide an accurate electronic description and to study how the orbitals and charges are rearranged under different conditions.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE

Learning from metastable symmetric-tilt grain boundaries using physics-based descriptors

Grain boundaries (GBs) govern critical properties of polycrystalline materials. Although significant advancements have been made in characterizing minimum energy and ordered GBs, real GBs are seldom found in such well-defined states. This diversity of atomic arrangements in metastable states makes it challenging to establish structure-property relationships with physical insights. Here, to address this challenge, we use data-driven methods to explore these relationships and examine the underlying physics. In this study, we utilize a large atomistic database (~5000) of minimum energy and metastable states of symmetric-tilt copper GBs, combined with physically motivated local atomic environment (LAE) descriptors [strain functional descriptors (SFDs)], to predict GB properties and gain physical insights. Our regression models exhibit robust predictive capabilities using only 19 descriptors, generalizing to atomic environments in nanocrystals. A significant highlight of our work is the integration of an unsupervised method with SFDs to elucidate LAEs at GBs and their role in determining properties. The model, trained on these minimum energy and metastable GBs using SFDs, predicts the properties of unseen nanocrystals with good accuracy. Our research underscores the role of a physics-based representation of LAEs and the efficacy of data-driven methods in establishing GB structure-property relationships.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE