Bond Order Potentials for Covalent Elements
Bond order potentials for covalent elements. This chapter will be dedicated to a short history of the so called \bond order" potentials [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] (BOPs), that represent an interesting class of the rather scattered family of analytic potentials. Analytic interatomic potentials (sometimes referred to as empirical, semi-empirical or clas- sical potentials) are used for a variety of purposes, ranging from the estimation of minimum energy structures for surface reconstruction, grain boundaries or related defects, to the descrip- tion of the liquid structure. All analytic potentials are de¯ned through a functional form of the interatomic interactions, whose parameters are ¯tted to a selected database. According to Brenner [8], an analytic potential needs to be: ² Flexible: the function should be flexible enough to accommodate the inclusion of a relatively wide range of structures in a ¯tting database. ² Accurate: the potential function must be able to accurately reproduce quantities such energies, bond lengths, elastic constant, and related properties entering a ¯tting database. ² Transferable: the functional form of the potential should be able to reproduce related prop- erties that are not included in the ¯tting database. In practise the potential should be able to give a good description of the energy landscape for any possible realistic con¯guration characterized by the set of atomic positions frig. ² Computationally e±cient: the function should be of such a form that it is tractable for a desired calculation, given the available computing resources. We note that one of the paradigms that has led science through its development, i.e. the Occam razor (\Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity"), is not mentioned here.
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