An accurate interatomic potential for the TiAlNb ternary alloy developed by deep neural network learning method.

The complex phase diagram and bonding nature of the TiAl system make it difficult to accurately describe its various properties and phases by traditional atomistic force fields. Here, we develop a machine learning interatomic potential with a deep neural network method for the TiAlNb ternary alloy based on a dataset built by first-principles calculations. The training set includes bulk elementary metals and intermetallic structures with slab and amorphous configurations. This potential is validated by comparing bulk properties-including lattice constant and elastic constants, surface energies, vacancy formation energies, and stacking fault energies-with their respective density functional theory values. Moreover, our potential could accurately predict the average formation energy and stacking fault energy of γ-TiAl doped with Nb. The tensile properties of γ-TiAl are simulated by our potential and verified by experiments. These results support the applicability of our potential under more practical conditions.