Related papers: Minimum energy paths for dislocation nucleation in…
We study numerically the energetics and atomic mechanisms of misfit dislocation nucleation and stress relaxation in a two-dimensional atomistic model of strained epitaxial layers on a substrate with lattice misfit. Relaxation processes from…
A possible mechanism for the formation of a 90{\deg} misfit dislocation at the Ge/Si(001) interface through homogeneous nucleation is identified from atomic scale calculations where a minimum energy path connecting the coherent epitaxial…
Minimum energy paths for transitions such as atomic and/or spin rearrangements in thermalized systems are the transition paths of largest statistical weight. Such paths are frequently calculated using the nudged elastic band method, where…
Popular methods for identifying transition paths between energy minima, such as the nudged elastic band and string methods, typically do not incorporate potential energy curvature information, leading to slow relaxation to the minimum…
We study numerically the equilibrium shapes, shape transitions and dislocation nucleation of small strained epitaxial islands with a two-dimensional atomistic model, using simple interatomic pair potentials. We first map out the phase…
Global optimization of transition paths in complex atomic scale systems is addressed in the context of misfit dislocation formation in a strained Ge film on Si(001). Such paths contain multiple intermediate minima connected by minimum…
Diamond, the hardest natural crystal, has attracted significant attention for its plasticity, which is reported to be determined by its stacking faults. Studies mainly focused on one-dimensional linear pathways in stacking transitions,…
The minimum energy path (MEP) is the most probable transition path that connects two equilibrium states of a potential energy landscape. It has been widely used to study transition mechanisms as well as transition rates in the fields of…
We study dislocation networks in the plane using the vectorial phase-field model introduced by Ortiz and coworkers, in the limit of small lattice spacing. We show that, in a scaling regime where the total length of the dislocations is…
We use the phase field crystal model to study nucleation of edge dislocations in two dimensions under an applied stress field. A dislocation dipole nucleates under the applied stress, consistent with Burgers vector conservation. The phase…
We demonstrate that the straightforward application of the Nudged Elastic Band (NEB) method does not determine the correct Peierls barrier of 1/2<111> screw dislocations in BCC metals. Although this method guarantees that the states…
A computational framework is presented for the sampling of the energy surface of magnetic systems via the systematic identification of first-order saddle points that determine connectivity of metastable states and define the mechanisms of…
In seeking to understand at a microscopic level the response of dislocations to stress we have undertaken to study as completely as possible the simplest case: a single dislocation in a two dimensional crystal. The intention is that results…
We apply the minimum energy paths (MEPs) approach to study the helix unwinding transition in chiral nematic liquid crystals. A mechanism of the transition is determined by a MEP passing through a first order saddle point on the free energy…
We present a variational theory for lattice defects of rotational and translational type. We focus on finite systems of planar wedge disclinations, disclination dipoles, and edge dislocations, which we model as the solutions to minimum…
We present a modified version of the nudged elastic band (NEB) algorithm to find minimum energy paths con-necting two known configurations. We show that replacing the harmonic band-energy term with a discretized version of the…
In this paper we have investigated, through computer simulations, dislocation nucleation and dislocation dynamics in a heterostructure system with the lattice-mismatch interface, i.e. a system with internal strain. In particular, we have…
Capturing twin nucleation in full-field crystal plasticity is a long-standing problem in materials science. The challenge resides mainly in the biased regional lattice transformation associated with twin formation in defiance of its…
In this work we model the evolution of strain energy during different growth stages of heterostructure nanowires. We find that the minimum energy configuration changes abruptly from fully elastically strained to partially relaxed due to…
The folding pathway and rate coefficients of the folding of a knotted protein are calculated for a potential energy function with minimal energetic frustration. A kinetic transition network is constructed using the discrete path sampling…