The Tersoff potential for extreme environment

Abstract

A novel modification of the Tersoff potential for Si is presented. The modification improves the transferability of the Tersoff potential for liquid states without the change of original parameters and with no alteration of bulk properties. Also, the modification introduces a correction term for high-pressure states. The modification is meaningful considering that by high energy irradiations local liquid structures and unstable high-pressure manifolds may occur, therefore an interatomic potential must have an acceptable reliability on high thermal/pressure situations to simulate such phenomenon. Particularly, in the modification, a new screening function replaces the radial cutoff function and the bond order function is slightly changed. Also, a repulsive energy function is replaced by a correction function within a specific pair distance.