Warning! Note that elemental potentials taken from alloy descriptions may not work well for the pure species. This is particularly true if the elements were fit for compounds instead of being optimized separately. As with all interatomic potentials, please check to make sure that the performance is adequate for your problem.
Citation: J. Tersoff (1988), "Empirical Interatomic Potential for Carbon, with Applications to Amorphous Carbon", Physical Review Letters, 61(25), 2879-2882. DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.61.2879.
Abstract: An empirical interatomic potential is introduced, which gives a convenient and relatively accurate description of the structural properties and energetics of carbon, including elastic properties, phonons, polytypes, and defects and migration barriers in diamond and graphite. The potential is applied to study amorphous carbon formed in three different ways. Two resulting structures are similar to experimental a−C, but another more diamondlike form has essentially identical energy. The liquid is also found to have unexpected properties.