Realization of prediction of materials properties by ab initio computer simulation

[摘要] Ab initio treatment is becoming realistic to predict physical, chemical, and even mechanical properties of academically and industrially interesting materials. There is, however, some limitation in size and time of the system up to the order of several hundred atoms and ∼ 1 pico second, even if we use the fastest supercomputer efficiently. Therefore, it is very difficult to simulate realistic materials with grain boundaries and important reactions like diffusion in materials. To improve this situation, two ways have been invented. One way is to upgrade approximations to match the necessary levels according to inhomogeneous electron gas theory beyond the present day standard, i.e. local density approximation (LDA). The reason is simply that the system we are interested in is composed of many particles interacting with Coulomb forces governed by quantum mechanics. (Complete knowledge is available, and only what we should do is to make better approximations to explain the phenomena!). Another is to extract the necessary parameters from the ab initio calculations on systems with limited number of atoms, and apply these results into cluster variation, direct, or any other sophisticated methods based on classical concepts such as statistical mechanics.

[学科分类] 材料工程

[关键词] Materials properties;ab initio computer simulation.