Materials Virtual Lab

Weike’s swansong project in our group on “A Universal Machine Learning Model for Elemental Grain Boundary Energies” has just been published in Scripta Materialia! The grain boundary (GB) energy has a profound influence on the grain growth and properties of polycrystalline metals. Here, we show that the energy of a GB, normalized by the bulk cohesive energy, can be described purely by four geometric features to within a mean absolute error of 0.13 Jm^-2 . More importantly, this universal GB energy model can be extrapolated to the energies of high Σ GBs without loss in accuracy. These results highlight the importance of capturing fundamental scaling physics and domain knowledge in the design of interpretable, extrapolatable machine learning models for ma­terials science.

Check out this work here.

Mahdi’s cover art for his recent paper “MxLa1-xSiO2-yNz (M = Ca/Sr/Ba): Elucidating and Tuning the Structure and Eu2+ Local Environments to Develop Full-Visible Spectrum Phosphors” has been selected for the Front Cover of Chemistry of Materials!

Efficient near-infrared (NIR) LEDs are used in many applications, including medical diagnostics, food detection, security monitoring, and machine vision. In this collaborative work with the group of Prof Rong-jun Xie at Xiamen University published in Matter, Mahdi Amachraa developed descriptors of the Eu(II)-host interactions to predict the 5d-to-4f energy gap with a RMSE of 7.0 nm. By incorporating this predictor into a high-throughput screening of 223 nitride materials in the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database, we identified and experimentally validated (Sr,Ba)3Li4Si2N6:Eu(II) with NIR emissions of 800- 830 nm and high quantum efficiencies (QEs) of 30%-40%. This NIR emitter has 3x more power than prevailing NIR emitters. We demonstrate that the ultralong emission wavelength and high QE stem from a coordinated energy transfer and an optimized electronic delocalization around Eu(II).

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Our collaborative work with the group of Prof Claire Xiong on “Electrochemically induced amorphous-to-rock-salt phase transformation in niobium oxide electrode for Li-ion batteries” has been published in Nature Materials! In this work, we report a nanostructured rock-salt Nb2O5 electrode formed through an amorphous-to-crystalline transformation during repeated electrochemical cycling with Li+. This electrode can reversibly cycle three lithiums per Nb2O5, corresponding to a capacity of 269 mAh/g at 20 mA/g, and retains a capacity of 191 mAh/g at a high rate of 1 A/g. The main contribution from Yunxing Zuo of the Materials Virtual Lab is using DFT computations to show that the cubic rock-salt framework promotes the percolation of low-energy migration paths. We also develop a computable metric to identify other transition metal oxides with a likelihood of rock-salt formation. Our work suggests that inducing crystallization of amorphous nanomaterials through electrochemical cycling is a promising avenue for creating unconventional high-performance metal oxide electrode materials.

Check out the publication here.

Mahdi’s collaborative work with the group of Prof Rong-jun Xie on “M_xLa_1−xSiO_2−yN_z (M = Ca/Sr/Ba): Elucidating and Tuning the Structure and Eu²⁺ Local Environments to Develop Full-Visible Spectrum Phosphors” has just been published in Chemistry of Materials! The local environments of rare-earth activators have profound effects on the luminescent properties of phosphors. Here, we elucidate the crystal structure of the LaSiO₂N phosphor host using a combination of density functional theory calculations and synchrotron Xray diffraction. We determine that LaSiO₂N crystallizes in the monoclinic C2/c instead of the hexagonal P6̅c2 space group. To improve the luminescence performance, divalent cations M (M = Ca/Sr/Ba) were introduced into LaSiO₂N to eliminate Eu³⁺. A family of apatite M_1+xLa_4−xSi₃O_13−x/2:Eu²⁺ (x ∼ 1.5, M = Ca/Sr/Ba) phosphors was further developed with unprecedented ultra-broadband (290 nm) emission spectra and excellent thermal stability. Detailed local environment investigations reveal that the formation of oxygen vacancies within and beyond the first shell environment of Eu²⁺ is responsible for the redshift and broadening of the emission spectra via geometrical alteration of the Eu²⁺ local environment. This work provides new insights for understanding and optimizing the luminescence of rare-earth phosphors.

Check out this work here.