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Updated: Aug 18, 2026
Computation of Atmospheric Concentrations of Molecular Clusters from ab initio Thermochemistry
Published on: April 8, 2020
Strategies for increasing the efficiency of a genetic algorithm for the structural optimization of nanoalloy clusters
Lesley D Lloyd1, Roy L Johnston, Said Salhi
1School of Chemistry, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom. lesley@tc.bham.ac.uk
Abstract:
An improved genetic algorithm (GA) is described that has been developed to increase the efficiency of finding the global minimum energy isomers for nanoalloy clusters. The GA is optimized for the example Pt12Pd12, with specific investigation of: the effect of biasing the initial population by seeding; the effect of removing specified clusters from the population ("predation"); and the effect of varying the type of mutation operator applied. These changes are found to significantly enhance the efficiency of the GA, which is subsequently demonstrated by the application of the best strategy to a new cluster, namely Pt19Pd19.
