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- Bock, Florian, 1994-
(author)
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Combining ab‐initio and machine learning techniques for theoretical simulations of hard nitrides at extreme conditions
- 2024
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this thesis I focus on combining the high accuracy of first-principles calculations with modern machine learning methods to make large scale investigations of industrially relevant nitride systems reliable and computationally viable. I study the electronic, thermodynamic and mechanical properties of two families of compounds: Ti1−xAlxN alloys at the operational conditions of industrial cutting tools and ReNx systems at crushing pres-sures comparable to inner earth core conditions. Standard first-principles simulations of materials are usually carried out at zero temperature and pressure, and while many state-of-the-art approaches can take these effects into account, they are usually accompanied by a substantial increase in computational demand. In this thesis I therefore explore the possiblities of studying materials at extreme conditions using machine learning methods with extraordinary efficiency without loss of calculational accuracy. Ti1−xAlxN alloy coatings exhibit exceptional properties due to their inherent ability to spinodally decompose at elevated temperature, leading to age-hardening. Since the cubic B1 phase of Ti1−xAlxN is well-studied, available high-accuracy first-principles data served as both a benchmark and data set on which to train a machine learning interatomic potential. Using the reliable moment tensor potentials, an investigation of the accuracy and efficiency of this approach was carried out in a machine learning study. Building upon the success of this technique, implementation of a learning-on-the-fly (active learning) methodology into a workflow to determine accurate material properties with minimal prior knowledge showed great promise, while maintaining a computational demand up to two orders of magnitude lower than comparable first-principles approaches. Investigations of properties of industrially lesser desired, but sometimes present hexagonal alloy phases of Ti1−xAlxN are also included in this thesis, since knowledge and understanding of all competing phases can help guide development toward improving cutting tool lifetime and performance. Furthermore, while w-Ti1−xAlxN may not be able to compete with its cubic counterpart in terms of hardness, it shows promise for other applications due to its electronic and elastic properties. Metastable ReNx phases are high energy materials due to their covalent N-N and Re-N bonds, leading to exceptional mechanical and electronic properties. Just like diamond, the hardest and arguably most famous metastable mate-rial naturally occurring on earth, they are stabilized by extreme pressures and high temperatures, but can be quenched to ambient conditions. Understanding the formation and existence of these non-equilibrium compounds may hold the key to unlocking a new generation of hard materials. In this thesis, all currently known phases of ReNx compounds have been investigated, encompassing both experimentally observed and theoretically suggested structures. Investigations of the convex hulls across a broad pressure range were carried out, coupled with calculations of phonons in the proposed crystals to determine both energetic and dynamical stability. Overall, the studies included in this thesis focused mainly on investigation of the ground state of ReN2 at higher pressure, where experimental results were deviating from earlier theoretical predictions. Additional research focused on specifically exploring properties and stability of novel ReN6 at synthesis conditions using the active learning workflow to train an interatomic potential.
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| 2. |
- Tidholm, Johan, 1991-
(author)
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Lattice dynamics : From fundamental research to practical applications
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The reason to perform calculations in material science usually falls into one of two categories: to predict or explain the origin of material properties. This thesis covers first-principle calculations for solids at extreme conditions, from both of the two mentioned categories. I primarily have studied the effects of high-pressure and high-temperature on lattice dynamics, mechanical and electronic properties. To treat the effects of temperature, ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations and self-consistent phonon calculations, based on density functional theory, have been utilised. These approaches account for the temperature effects by considering thermally excited supercells as samples of a statistical ensemble. To extract properties from this representation, I have used methods which maps the supercell data to a unit cell representation or fits it to a simple model Hamiltonian.The small displacement method was used to analyse the dynamical stability for nitrides and polymorphs of silica, synthesised at high-pressure in a diamond anvil cell. The nitride compounds consist of a high amount of nitrogen either as chains, forming a porous framework together with transition metal atoms or as dinitrogen molecules, occupying the channels of the framework. The nitrogen chains consist of single- or double-bonded nitrogen atoms, making these compounds highly energetic. Polymorphs of silica can be used to model deep Earth liquids. These new polymorphs, named coesite-IV and coesite-V, consist of four-, five-, and six-oriented silicon. Some of the octahedra of the six-oriented silicon atoms, of these new phases, are sharing faces, which according to Pauling's third rule would make them highly unstable. My phonon calculations indicate these phases to be dynamically stable. Furthermore, my calculations predict higher compressibility for these new phases compared to the competing ones. By modelling silicate melts with coesite-IV and coesite-V, a more complex and compressible structure is expected, affecting the predicted seismic behaviour.I studied Kohn anomalies for body-centered cubic niobium by simulating this material with self-consistent phonon calculations. The electronic structure was studied by using a band unfolding technique, for which I obtained an effective unit cell representation of the electronic structure at elevated temperatures. Temperature primarily smeared the electronic states but did not induce significant shifts of the bands. In parallel, the anharmonicity of this system was studied using the temperature dependent effective potential method. Even close to the melting temperature, this element is remarkably harmonic. The experimentally observed disappearance of the Kohn anomalies with increased temperature is predominantly dependent, according to my calculations, on the temperature-induced smearing of the electronic states.Using stress-strain relations, accurate high-temperature elastic properties were predicted for Ti0.5Al0.5N. The simulations were performed with AIMD. The stresses were fitted using the least-squares method to a linear expression from which the elastic constants were derived. The results were compared with previously performed calculations that employed additional approximations. The results of the symmetry imposed force constant temperature dependent effective potential (SIFC-TDEP) method agrees well with our results. I also compared my results with TiN calculations that employed a similar methodology. My and the SIFC-TDEP results are reporting lower values for the polycrystalline moduli than the calculations for TiN. The data I generated were also used for a machine learned interatomic potential method, where moment tensor potentials were trained and evaluated, using this data.
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