Efficient Pourbaix diagrams of many-element compounds

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new computational method that significantly speeds up the generation of multi-element Pourbaix diagrams, enabling efficient analysis of complex electrochemical phase stability in materials.

Contribution

The authors develop a pre-processing approach that overcomes computational bottlenecks, allowing rapid construction of multi-element Pourbaix diagrams.

Findings

Method reduces computation time for multi-element diagrams

Enables analysis of systems with more elements than previously feasible

Improves the practicality of using Pourbaix diagrams in materials design

Abstract

Pourbaix diagrams have long been an essential tool for determining the phase stability of solids and their associated ionic species under electrochemical conditions. In recent years, Pourbaix diagrams have been used for applications ranging from corrosion-resistance alloy design to electrocatalysis, and the data from which they are generated has been enhanced by the availability of materials data in various online databases. However, generation of multi-element Pourbaix diagrams has a critical bottleneck which makes 3-element systems difficult to analyze quickly, and 4 and 5 element systems intractable. In this work, we present a method for constructing Pourbaix diagrams which uses a pre-processing step to circumvent the most egregious computational bottleneck and make many-element Pourbaix diagrams computationally efficient.