Li diffusion in Si and LiSi: Nuclear quantum effects and anharmonicity.

The diffusion of Li in bulk Si and crystalline LiSi is investigated over a wide range of temperatures employing first-principles calculations based on density functional theory, transition state theory, and the kinetic Monte Carlo method. Nuclear quantum effects are incorporated by computing the vibrational spectrum and its effect on the effective energy barrier. The Li diffusion coefficient in bulk Si calculated with such quantum effects is ∼33% lower than the classical limit near room temperature due to higher effective energy barrier and tends to the classical limit at a high temperature (>1000 K). The presence of anharmonicity, estimated by the quasiharmonic approximation and the cBΩ model, increases the diffusion coefficient by ∼60%. For Li diffusion in LiSi with multiple vacancy jumps, we obtain an effective diffusion barrier of 0.27 eV ± 0.01 eV. In the Li-Si system, the quantum mechanical effects are only marginally significant at room temperature.

The Limited Predictive Power of the Pauling Rules.

The Pauling rules have been used for decades to rationalise the crystal structures of ionic compounds. Despite their importance, there has been no statistical assessment of the performances of these five empirical rules so far. Here, we rigorously and automatically test all five Pauling rules for a large data set of around 5000 known oxides. We discuss each Pauling rule separately, stressing their limits and range of application in terms of chemistries and structures. We conclude that only 13 % of the oxides simultaneously satisfy the last four rules, indicating a much lower predictive power than expected.

OPTIMADE, an API for exchanging materials data.

The Open Databases Integration for Materials Design (OPTIMADE) consortium has designed a universal application programming interface (API) to make materials databases accessible and interoperable. We outline the first stable release of the specification, v1.0, which is already supported by many leading databases and several software packages. We illustrate the advantages of the OPTIMADE API through worked examples on each of the public materials databases that support the full API specification.