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Machine learning algorithms have recently emerged as a tool to generate force fields which display accuracies approaching the ones of the ab-initio calculations they are trained on, but are much faster to compute. The enhanced computational speed of machine learning force fields results key for modelling metallic nanoparticles, as their fluxionality and multi-funneled energy landscape needs to be sampled over long time scales. In this review, we first formally introduce the most commonly used machine learning algorithms for force field generation, briefly outlining their structure and properties. We then address the core issue of training database selection, reporting methodologies both already used and yet unused in literature. We finally report and discuss the recent literature regarding machine learning force fields to sample the energy landscape and study the catalytic activity of metallic nanoparticles.
We assess Gaussian process (GP) regression as a technique to model interatomic forces in metal nanoclusters by analysing the performance of 2-body, 3-body and many-body kernel functions on a set of 19-atom Ni cluster structures. We find that 2-body GP kernels fail to provide faithful force estimates, despite succeeding in bulk Ni systems. However, both 3- and many-body kernels predict forces within a $sim$0.1 eV/$text{AA}$ average error even for small training datasets, and achieve high accuracy even on out-of-sample, high temperature, structures. While training and testing on the same structure always provides satisfactory accuracy, cross-testing on dissimilar structures leads to higher prediction errors, posing an extrapolation problem. This can be cured using heterogeneous training on databases that contain more than one structure, which results in a good trade-off between versatility and overall accuracy. Starting from a 3-body kernel trained this way, we build an efficient non-parametric 3-body force field that allows accurate prediction of structural properties at finite temperatures, following a newly developed scheme [Glielmo et al. PRB 97, 184307 (2018)]. We use this to assess the thermal stability of Ni$_{19}$ nanoclusters at a fractional cost of full ab initio calculations.
Atomistic or ab-initio molecular dynamics simulations are widely used to predict thermodynamics and kinetics and relate them to molecular structure. A common approach to go beyond the time- and length-scales accessible with such computationally expensive simulations is the definition of coarse-grained molecular models. Existing coarse-graining approaches define an effective interaction potential to match defined properties of high-resolution models or experimental data. In this paper, we reformulate coarse-graining as a supervised machine learning problem. We use statistical learning theory to decompose the coarse-graining error and cross-validation to select and compare the performance of different models. We introduce CGnets, a deep learning approach, that learns coarse-grained free energy functions and can be trained by a force matching scheme. CGnets maintain all physically relevant invariances and allow one to incorporate prior physics knowledge to avoid sampling of unphysical structures. We show that CGnets can capture all-atom explicit-solvent free energy surfaces with models using only a few coarse-grained beads and no solvent, while classical coarse-graining methods fail to capture crucial features of the free energy surface. Thus, CGnets are able to capture multi-body terms that emerge from the dimensionality reduction.
We show how standard Metadynamics coupled with classical Molecular Dynamics can be successfully ap- plied to sample the configurational and free energy space of metallic and bimetallic nanopclusters via the implementation of collective variables related to the pair distance distribution function of the nanoparticle itself. As paradigmatic examples we show an application of our methodology to Ag147, Pt147 and their alloy AgshellPtcore at 1:1 and 2:1 chemical compositions. The proposed scheme is not only able to reproduce known structural transformation pathways, as the five and the six square-diamond mechanisms both in pure and core-shell nanoparticles but also to predict a new route connecting icosahedron to anti-cuboctahedron.
The MolMod database is presented, which is openly accessible at http://molmod.boltzmann-zuse.de/ and contains presently intermolecular force fields for over 150 pure fluids. It was developed and is maintained by the Boltzmann-Zuse Society for Computational Molecular Engineering (BZS). The set of molecular models in the MolMod database provides a coherent framework for molecular simulations of fluids. The molecular models in the MolMod database consist of Lennard-Jones interaction sites, point charges, and point dipoles and quadrupoles, which can be equivalently represented by multiple point charges. The force fields can be exported as input files for the simulation programs ms2 and ls1 mardyn, Gromacs, and LAMMPS. To characterise the semantics associated with the numerical database content, a force-field nomenclature is introduced that can also be used in other contexts in materials modelling at the atomistic and mesoscopic levels. The models of the pure substances that are included in the data base were generally optimised such as to yield good representations of experimental data of the vapour-liquid equilibrium with a focus on the vapour pressure and the saturated liquid density. In many cases, the models also yield good predictions of caloric, transport, and interfacial properties of the pure fluids. For all models, references to the original works in which they were developed are provided. The models can be used straightforwardly for predictions of properties of fluid mixtures using established combination rules. Input errors are a major source of errors in simulations. The MolMod database contributes to reducing such errors.
In this work, we present a highly accurate spectral neighbor analysis potential (SNAP) model for molybdenum (Mo) developed through the rigorous application of machine learning techniques on large materials data sets. Despite Mos importance as a structural metal, existing force fields for Mo based on the embedded atom and modified embedded atom methods still do not provide satisfactory accuracy on many properties. We will show that by fitting to the energies, forces and stress tensors of a large density functional theory (DFT)-computed dataset on a diverse set of Mo structures, a Mo SNAP model can be developed that achieves close to DFT accuracy in the prediction of a broad range of properties, including energies, forces, stresses, elastic constants, melting point, phonon spectra, surface energies, grain boundary energies, etc. We will outline a systematic model development process, which includes a rigorous approach to structural selection based on principal component analysis, as well as a differential evolution algorithm for optimizing the hyperparameters in the model fitting so that both the model error and the property prediction error can be simultaneously lowered. We expect that this newly developed Mo SNAP model will find broad applications in large-scale, long-time scale simulations.