Efficient global optimization of reactive force-field parameters

J Comput Chem. 2015 Jul 30;36(20):1550-61. doi: 10.1002/jcc.23966. Epub 2015 Jun 17.

Abstract

Reactive force fields make low-cost simulations of chemical reactions possible. However, optimizing them for a given chemical system is difficult and time-consuming. We present a high-performance implementation of global force-field parameter optimization, which delivers parameter sets of the same quality with much less effort and in far less time than before, and also offers excellent parallel scaling. We demonstrate these features with example applications targeting the ReaxFF force field. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: ReaxFF; genetic algorithms; global optimization; reactive force fields.