Machine learning formation enthalpies of intermetallics

Developing fast and accurate methods to discover intermetallic compounds is relevant for alloy design. While density-functional-theory (DFT)-based methods have accelerated design of binary and ternary alloys by providing rapid access to the energy and properties of the stable intermetallics, they are not amenable for rapidly screening the vast combinatorial space of multi-principal element alloys (MPEAs). Here, a machine-learning model is presented for predicting the formation enthalpy of binary intermetallics and is used to identify new ones. The model uses easily accessible elemental properties as descriptors and has a mean absolute error of 0.025eV/atom in predicting the formation enthalpy of stable binary intermetallics reported in the Materials Project database. The model further predicts stable intermetallics to form in 112 binary alloy systems that do not have any stable intermetallics reported in the Materials Project database. DFT calculations confirm one such stable intermetallic identified by the model, NbV2, to be on the convex hull. Furthermore, an adaptive transfer learning method is used to generalize the model to predict ternary intermetallics with a similar accuracy as DFT, which suggests that it could be extended to identify compositionally complex intermetallics that may form in MPEAs.