Machine learning interatomic potential can infer electrical response

Zhong P, Kim D, King DS, Cheng B. 2025. Machine learning interatomic potential can infer electrical response. npj Computational Materials. 11, 384.

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Journal Article | Published | English

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Author
Zhong, Peichen; Kim, Dongjin; King, Daniel S.; Cheng, BingqingISTA

Corresponding author has ISTA affiliation

Department
Abstract
Modeling the response of material and chemical systems to electric fields remains a longstanding challenge. Machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) offer an efficient and scalable alternative to quantum mechanical methods, but do not by themselves incorporate electrical response. Here, we show that polarization and Born effective charge (BEC) tensors can be directly extracted from long-range MLIPs within the Latent Ewald Summation (LES) framework, solely by learning from energy and force data. Using this approach, we predict the infrared spectra of bulk water under zero or finite external electric fields, ionic conductivities of high-pressure superionic ice, and the phase transition and hysteresis in ferroelectric PbTiO3 perovskite. This work thus extends the capability of MLIPs to predict electrical response –without training on charges or polarization or BECs– and enables accurate modeling of electric-field-driven processes in diverse systems at scale.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2025-12-29
Journal Title
npj Computational Materials
Publisher
Springer Nature
Acknowledgement
The authors thank for valuable discussions with Pinchen Xie, David Limmer, Jeff Neaton, and Greg Voth. The authors thank Sebastien Hamel for providing the DFT MD trajectories for superionic water, and help clarifying questions related to the pseudopotentials. The authors thank Federico Grasselli and Stefano Baroni for providing data and notebooks for computing the conductivity of a molten salt. This research used the Savio computational cluster resource provided by the Berkeley Research Computing program at the University of California, Berkeley (supported by the UC Berkeley Chancellor, Vice Chancellor for Research, and Chief Information Officer). D.S.K. and P.Z. acknowledge funding from the BIDMaP Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Volume
11
Article Number
384
eISSN
IST-REx-ID

Cite this

Zhong P, Kim D, King DS, Cheng B. Machine learning interatomic potential can infer electrical response. npj Computational Materials. 2025;11. doi:10.1038/s41524-025-01911-z
Zhong, P., Kim, D., King, D. S., & Cheng, B. (2025). Machine learning interatomic potential can infer electrical response. Npj Computational Materials. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41524-025-01911-z
Zhong, Peichen, Dongjin Kim, Daniel S. King, and Bingqing Cheng. “Machine Learning Interatomic Potential Can Infer Electrical Response.” Npj Computational Materials. Springer Nature, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41524-025-01911-z.
P. Zhong, D. Kim, D. S. King, and B. Cheng, “Machine learning interatomic potential can infer electrical response,” npj Computational Materials, vol. 11. Springer Nature, 2025.
Zhong P, Kim D, King DS, Cheng B. 2025. Machine learning interatomic potential can infer electrical response. npj Computational Materials. 11, 384.
Zhong, Peichen, et al. “Machine Learning Interatomic Potential Can Infer Electrical Response.” Npj Computational Materials, vol. 11, 384, Springer Nature, 2025, doi:10.1038/s41524-025-01911-z.
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