Directional Design of Materials Based on Multi-Objective Optimization: A Case Study of Two-Dimensional Thermoelectric SnSe

Abstract

The directional design of functional materials with multi-objective constraints is a big challenge, in which performance and stability are determined by a complicated interconnection of different physical factors. We apply multi-objective optimization, based on the Pareto Efficiency and Particle-Swarm Optimization methods, to design new functional materials directionally. As a demonstration, we achieve the thermoelectric design of 2D SnSe materials via the above methods. We identify several novel metastable 2D SnSe structures with simultaneously lower free energy and better thermoelectric performance in their experimentally reported monolayer structures. We hope that the results of our work on the multi-objective Pareto Optimization method will represent a step forward in the integrative design of future multi-objective and multi-functional materials.