Crystal structure prediction

Crystal structure prediction (CSP) is the calculation of the crystal structures of solids from first principles. Reliable methods of predicting the crystal structure of a compound, based only on its composition, has been a goal of the physical sciences since the 1950s. Computational methods employed include simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, distributed multipole analysis, random sampling, basin hopping, data mining, density functional theory and molecular mechanics.

The crystal structures of simple ionic solids have long been rationalised in terms of Pauling's rules, first set out in 1929 by Linus Pauling. For metals and semiconductors one has different rules involving valence electron concentration. However, prediction and rationalization are rather different things. Most commonly, the term crystal structure prediction means a search for the minimum-energy arrangement of its constituent atoms (or, for molecular crystals, of its molecules) in space. The problem has two facets: combinatorics (the "search phase space", in practice most acute for inorganic crystals), and energetics (or "stability ranking", most acute for molecular organic crystals). For complex non-molecular crystals (where the "search problem" is most acute), major recent advances have been the development of the Martonak version of metadynamics, and the Oganov-Glass evolutionary algorithm USPEX. The latter is capable of solving the global optimization problem with up to a few hundred degrees of freedom, while the approach of metadynamics is to reduce all structural variables to a handful of "slow" collective variables (which often works).

Predicting organic crystal structures is important in academic and industrial science, particularly for pharmaceuticals and pigments, where understanding polymorphism is beneficial. The crystal structures of molecular substances, particularly organic compounds, are very hard to predict and rank in order of stability. Intermolecular interactions are relatively weak and non-directional and long range. This results in typical lattice and free energy differences between polymorphs that are often only a few kJ/mol, very rarely exceeding 10 kJ/mol. Crystal structure prediction methods often locate many possible structures within this small energy range. These small energy differences are challenging to predict reliably without excessive computational effort.

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