No Arabic abstract
The increased energy and power density required in modern electronics poses a challenge for designing new dielectric polymer materials with high energy density while maintaining low loss at high applied electric fields. Recently, an advanced computational screening method coupled with hierarchical modelling has accelerated the identification of promising high energy density materials. It is well known that the dielectric response of polymeric materials is largely influenced by their phases and local heterogeneous structures as well as operational temperature. Such inputs are crucial to accelerate the design and discovery of potential polymer candidates. However, an efficient computational framework to probe temperature dependence of the dielectric properties of polymers, while incorporating effects controlled by their morphology is still lacking. In this paper, we propose a scalable computational framework based on reactive molecular dynamics with a valence-state aware polarizable charge model, which is capable of handling practically relevant polymer morphologies and simultaneously provide near-quantum accuracy in estimating dielectric properties of various polymer systems. We demonstrate the predictive power of our framework on high energy density polymer systems recently identified through rational experimental-theoretical co-design. Our scalable and automated framework may be used for high-throughput theoretical screenings of combinatorial large design space to identify next-generation high energy density polymer materials.
Three different polarizable ion models for molten AgBr have been studied by molecular dynamics simulations. The three models are based on a rigid ion model (RIM) with a pair potential of the type proposed by Vashishta and Rahman for alpha-AgI, to which the induced dipole polarization of the ions is added. In the first (PIM1), the dipole moments are only induced by the local electric field; while in the other two (PIM1s and PIM2s), a short-range overlap induced polarization opposes the electrically induced dipole moments. In the PIM1 and the PIM1s only the anions are assumed polarizable, while in the PIM2s both species are polarizable. Long molecular dynamics simulations show that the PIM2s is an unphysical model since, for some improbable but possible critical configurations, the ions become infinitely polarized. The results of using the PIM1, the PIM1s, as well as those of the simple RIM, have been compared for the static structure and ionic transport properties. The PIM1 reproduces the broad main peak of the total structure factor present in the neutron diffraction data, although the smoothed three-peak feature of this broad peak is slightly overestimated. The structural results for the PIM1s are intermediate between those for the RIM and the PIM1, but fail to reproduce the experimental features within the broad principal peak. Concerning the ionic transport properties, the value of the conductivity obtained using PIM1 is in good agreement with experimental values, while the self-diffusion coefficients and the conductivity for the PIM1s are lower than the corresponding values using the PIM1 and the RIM.
Schwarzites are crystalline, 3D porous structures with stable negative curvature formed of sp2-hybridized carbon atoms. These structures present topologies with tunable porous size and shape and unusual mechanical properties. In this work, we have investigated the mechanical behavior under compressive strains and energy absorption of four different Schwarzites, through reactive molecular dynamics simulations, using the ReaxFF force field as available in the LAMMPS code. We considered two Schwarzites families, the so-called Gyroid and Primitive and two structures from each family. Our results also show they exhibit remarkable resilience under mechanical compression. They can be reduced to half of their original size before structural failure (fracture) occurs.
The study of chemical reactions in aqueous media is very important for its implications in several fields of science, from biology to industrial processes. Modelling these reactions is however difficult when water directly participates in the reaction. Since it requires a fully quantum mechanical description of the system, $textit{ab-initio}$ molecular dynamics is the ideal candidate to shed light on these processes. However, its scope is limited by a high computational cost. A popular alternative is to perform molecular dynamics simulations powered by machine learning potentials, trained on an extensive set of quantum mechanical calculations. Doing so reliably for reactive processes is difficult because it requires including very many intermediate and transition state configurations. In this study, we used an active learning procedure accelerated by enhanced sampling to harvest such structures and to build a neural-network potential to study the urea decomposition process in water. This allowed us to obtain the free energy profiles of this important reaction in a wide range of temperatures, to discover a number of novel metastable states and to improve the accuracy of the kinetic rates calculations. Furthermore, we found that the formation of the zwitterionic intermediate has the same probability of occurring via an acidic or a basic pathway, which could be the cause of the insensitivity of reaction rates to the pH solution.
We obtain thermostatted ring polymer molecular dynamics (TRPMD) from exact quantum dynamics via Matsubara dynamics, a recently-derived form of linearization which conserves the quantum Boltzmann distribution. Performing a contour integral in the complex quantum Boltzmann distribution of Matsubara dynamics, replacement of the imaginary Liouvillian which results with a Fokker-Planck term gives TRPMD. We thereby provide error terms between TRPMD and quantum dynamics and predict the systems in which they are likely to be small. Using a harmonic analysis we show that careful addition of friction causes the correct oscillation frequency of the higher ring-polymer normal modes in a harmonic well, which we illustrate with calculation of the position-squared autocorrelation function. However, no physical friction parameter will produce the correct fluctuation dynamics for a parabolic barrier. The results in this paper are consistent with previous numerical studies and advise the use of TRPMD for the computation of spectra.
Two of the most successful methods that are presently available for simulating the quantum dynamics of condensed phase systems are centroid molecular dynamics (CMD) and ring polymer molecular dynamics (RPMD). Despite their conceptual differences, practical implementations of these methods differ in just two respects: the choice of the Parrinello-Rahman mass matrix and whether or not a thermostat is applied to the internal modes of the ring polymer during the dynamics. Here we explore a method which is halfway between the two approximations: we keep the path integral bead masses equal to the physical particle masses but attach a Langevin thermostat to the internal modes of the ring polymer during the dynamics. We justify this by showing analytically that the inclusion of an internal mode thermostat does not affect any of the desirable features of RPMD: thermostatted RPMD (TRPMD) is equally valid with respect to everything that has actually been proven about the method as RPMD itself. In particular, because of the choice of bead masses, the resulting method is still optimum in the short-time limit, and the transition state approximation to its reaction rate theory remains closely related to the semiclassical instanton approximation in the deep quantum tunneling regime. In effect, there is a continuous family of methods with these properties, parameterised by the strength of the Langevin friction. Here we explore numerically how the approximation to quantum dynamics depends on this friction, with a particular emphasis on vibrational spectroscopy. We find that a broad range of frictions approaching optimal damping give similar results, and that these results are immune to both the resonance problem of RPMD and the curvature problem of CMD.