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Record W4407081389 · doi:10.1039/d4sc06530a

Crash testing machine learning force fields for molecules, materials, and interfaces: molecular dynamics in the TEA challenge 2023

2025· article· en· W4407081389 on OpenAlexafffund
Igor Poltavsky, Mirela Puleva, Anton Charkin-Gorbulin, Grégory Fonseca, Ilyes Batatia, Nicholas J. Browning, Stefan Chmiela, Mengnan Cui, J. Thorben Frank, Stefan Heinen, Bing Huang, Silvan Käser, Adil Kabylda, Danish Khan, Carolin Müller, Alastair J. A. Price, Kai Riedmiller, Kai Töpfer, Tsz Wai Ko, Markus Meuwly, Matthias Rupp, Gábor Cśanyi, O. Anatole von Lilienfeld, Johannes T. Margraf, Klaus-Robert Müller, Alexandre Tkatchenko

Bibliographic record

VenueChemical Science · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMaterials Science
TopicMachine Learning in Materials Science
Canadian institutionsUniversity of TorontoVector Institute
FundersH2020 European Research CouncilNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaMinistry of Science and ICT, South KoreaKorea UniversityKlaus Tschira StiftungUniversity of TorontoBundesministerium für Bildung und ForschungFonds National de la Recherche LuxembourgSchweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen ForschungUniversité du LuxembourgAlexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
KeywordsMolecular dynamicsMoleculeNanotechnologyCrashForce field (fiction)Computer scienceMaterials scienceChemical physicsChemistryComputational chemistryArtificial intelligenceOrganic chemistry

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

We present the second part of the rigorous evaluation of modern machine learning force fields (MLFFs) within the TEA Challenge 2023. This study provides an in-depth analysis of the performance of MACE, SO3krates, sGDML, SOAP/GAP, and FCHL19* in modeling molecules, molecule-surface interfaces, and periodic materials. We compare observables obtained from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using different MLFFs under identical conditions. Where applicable, density-functional theory (DFT) or experiment serves as a reference to reliably assess the performance of the ML models. In the absence of DFT benchmarks, we conduct a comparative analysis based on results from various MLFF architectures. Our findings indicate that, at the current stage of MLFF development, the choice of ML model is in the hands of the practitioner. When a problem falls within the scope of a given MLFF architecture, the resulting simulations exhibit weak dependency on the specific architecture used. Instead, emphasis should be placed on developing complete, reliable, and representative training datasets. Nonetheless, long-range noncovalent interactions remain challenging for all MLFF models, necessitating special caution in simulations of physical systems where such interactions are prominent, such as molecule-surface interfaces. The findings presented here reflect the state of MLFF models as of October 2023.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.009
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.008
Threshold uncertainty score0.026

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.009
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0020.002
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0080.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.012
GPT teacher head0.273
Teacher spread0.261 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations19
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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