Page 1 of 1

Interstitialcy mechanism

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 9:16 pm
by nerikar
Hi Everyone,
I am simulating oxygen interstitial diffusion in fluorite structures. The dominant mechanism is the interstitialcy mechanism but I am having trouble figuring out the saddle point configuration. As I understand it, the configuration should be 2 interstitials with a vacancy in the middle. But I do not know the final position to do a NEB calculation. Can somebody help me figure this out ? Any help would be appreciated.
Thank You.

Re: Interstitialcy mechanism

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 4:05 pm
by graeme
Besides trying to determine a final state from your intuition about the reaction mechanism, you could either run dynamics at a high temperature to find nearby minima, or run min-mode following saddle point searches from your initial state.

Re: Interstitialcy mechanism

Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 3:42 pm
by nerikar
Thank You for the suggestion. I tried optimizing the structure with one interstitial in the vacant octahedral position at a higher temperature using GULP. But the interstitial goes back to the vacant site. I will now try the dimer method to get the diffusion path.