English

Automated calculation and convergence of defect transport tensors

Computational Physics 2020-09-04 v2 Materials Science Statistical Mechanics Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability

Abstract

Defect transport is a key process in materials science and catalysis, but as migration mechanisms are often too complex to enumerate a priori, calculation of transport tensors typically have no measure of convergence and require significant end user intervention. These two bottlenecks prevent high-throughput implementations essential to propagate model-form uncertainty from interatomic interactions to predictive simulations. In order to address these issues, we extend a massively parallel accelerated sampling scheme, autonomously controlled by Bayesian estimators of statewise sampling completeness, to build atomistic kinetic Monte Carlo models on a state space irreducible under exchange and space group symmetries. Focusing on isolated defects, we derive analytic expressions for defect transport tensors and provide a convergence metric by calculating the Kullback-Leiber divergence across the ensemble of diffusion processes consistent with the sampling uncertainty. The autonomy and efficacy of the method is demonstrated on surface trimers in tungsten and hexa-interstitials in magnesium oxide, both of which exhibit complex, correlated migration mechanisms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.07752,
  title  = {Automated calculation and convergence of defect transport tensors},
  author = {Thomas D Swinburne and Danny Perez},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.07752},
  year   = {2020}
}