ReaxFF Engine Features Vs. Old Standalone Program

Introduction

Starting with AMS2018, ReaxFF is an engine for the AMS driver, thus sharing many of the features and input syntax with the other engines in the Amsterdam Modeling Suite.

Before AMS2018, ReaxFF was run as a standalone program. The older standalone program (“Old ReaxFF”) can still be run from the command-line, also in AMS2020. Some features are only available in this older program.

The engine shares all core routines with the standalone program, guaranteeing identical energies and forces between these two codes.

Feature comparison

Some features of the old standalone ReaxFF program have been implemented into the AMS driver, others into the ReaxFF engine, and some are currently not available in the new implementation. The table below indicates how certain features can be activated.

Feature

New implementation

Old implementation

0D, 1D, 2D periodicity

AMS driver

not available

ACKS2

force field file

old manual entry

Adsorption analysis

AMS driver

old manual entry

Bond boost

AMS driver

old manual entry

ChemTraYzer

AMS utilities

old manual entry

CMAES FF optimizer

ParAMS

old manual entry

CVHD

AMS driver

old manual entry

Elastic wall restraint

not available

old manual entry

eReaxFF

force field file

old manual entry

External electric fields

AMS driver

old manual entry

Force-bias Monte Carlo

AMS driver

old manual entry

Force field parametrization

ParAMS

old manual entry

Grand-canonical Monte Carlo

AMS driver

old manual entry

Local atomic temperature

not available

old manual entry

LG dispersion

force field file

old manual entry

Molecular charge constraints

ReaxFF Engine

old manual entry

Molecule gun

AMS driver

old manual entry

NEMD (thermal conductivity)

AMS driver

old manual entry

Per-atom stress tensor

ReaxFF engine

old manual entry

Tapered bond orders

ReaxFF engine

old manual entry

Temperature profile along axis

AMS driver

old manual entry

Volume regimes

AMS driver

vregime.in Training Course

Differences in execution

To run ReaxFF as an AMS engine (recommended), run the ams executable and specify Engine ReaxFF:

"$AMSBIN"/ams <<EOF
    # ams input
    Engine ReaxFF
       ForceField CHO.ff
    EndEngine
EOF

To run ReaxFF as a standalone program (not recommended unless necessary), run the reaxff executable. The files control, geo, etc., must exist in the current working directory. For more information, see the Old ReaxFF manual.

"$AMSBIN"/reaxff