A new interatomic potential for nanoscale silica

Edwin Flikkema, Stefan T. Bromley

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

101 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A new interatomic potential, tuned to calculate the energies and structures of nanoscale silica, is presented. The potential parameters for Si–O, O–O, and Si–Si interactions were fitted using a training set consisting of a number of (SiO2)n (n<=5) nanocluster structures calculated using density functional theory (DFT). Testing of the potential was performed using 25 different (SiO2)7 nanoclusters. For nanocluster energies and structures, the new potential out-performs other similar potentials widely used for bulk silica and also performs favourably compared with semi-empirical methods. In addition, using a genetic algorithm with the new potential, two novel (SiO2)7 ground state structures are proposed.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)622-629
Number of pages8
JournalChemical Physics Letters
Volume378
Issue number5-6
Early online date30 Aug 2003
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12 Sept 2003

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