Stability (learning theory)

Physics

Atom (system on chip)

Crystallography

Crystal structure prediction

Algorithm

Crystal structure

Statistical physics

Curse of dimensionality

Machine learning

Density functional theory

Electronegativity

Computational chemistry

Embedded system

Artificial intelligence

Chemistry

Materials science

Programming language

Computer science

Quantum mechanics

Crystal (programming language)

Artificial neural network

Nature Communications

Predicting the stability of crystals is one of the central problems in materials science. Today, density functional theory (DFT) calculations are the computational tool of choice to obtain energies of crystals with quantitative accuracy. Despite algorithmic and computing advances, DFT calculations remain comparatively expensive and scale poorly with system size. Here we show that deep neural networks utilizing just two descriptors - the Pauling electronegativity and ionic radii - can predict the DFT formation energies of C3A2D3O12 garnets with extremely low mean absolute errors of 7-8 meV/atom, an order of magnitude improvement over previous machine learning models and well within the limits of DFT accuracy. Further extension to mixed garnets with little loss in accuracy can be achieved using a binary encoding scheme that introduces minimal increase in descriptor dimensionality. Our results demonstrate that generalizable deep-learning models for quantitative crystal stability prediction can be built on a small set of chemically-intuitive descriptors. Such models provide the means to rapidly transverse vast chemical spaces to accurately identify stable compositions, accelerating the discovery of novel materials with potentially superior properties.

Deep neural networks for accurate predictions of crystal stability