Calculation update! New properties have been added to the website for dislocation monopole core structures, dynamic relaxes of both crystal and liquid phases, and melting temperatures! Currently, the results for these properties predominately focus on EAM-style potentials, but the results will be updated for other potentials as the associated calculations finish. Feel free to give us feedback on the new properties so we can improve their representations as needed.
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: A. Koneru, P.S. Dutta, A. Muhammed, H. Chan, K. Balasubramanian, S. Manna, K. Sasikumar, P. Darancet, and S.K.R.S. Sankaranarayanan (2025), "Development and assessment of hierarchical multi-reward reinforcement learning based potential for silicene with state-of-the-art models", Materials Today Advances26, 100583. DOI: 10.1016/j.mtadv.2025.100583.
Abstract: We develop a new interatomic force field for Silicene, a 2D material with a buckled hexagonal lattice structure with high polymorphism. We introduce new parameterizations of a Tersoff model using a hierarchical multi-reward reinforcement learning (RL) methodology coupled with a continuous Monte Carlo Tree Search optimization. Our model significantly outperforms existing methods by enhancing the accuracy of predictions for the structural and thermodynamic properties of seven silicene polymorphs-including structure, energy, equation of state, elasticity, and phonon dispersion-when compared to established models. We further make a comprehensive comparison of the various models in predicting the mechanical and thermal properties of silicene. We trace the origin of the improved performance to the description of the angular dependence in the bond-order term, suggesting that modifying the angular terms in short-range models is essential to capture the structural diversity in low dimensional systems.
Notes: This potential was developed to simulate the 2D phase silicene.