The MedeA Environment includes a rich set of builders for many types of systems and applications. Use MedeA’s Builders for constructing atomic-scale models of hard, soft or fluid materials. Work with crystalline or amorphous materials, bulk or surface systems, defect structures, molecules, nanostructures and adsorbates. Complementing MedeA’s standard building capabilities are several specialized modules for building complex and hybrid materials such as amorphous materials, cross-linked polymers or composite structures. In addition, MedeA offers tools to construct heterogeneous interfaces, grain boundaries, and for docking molecules in microporous structures.
MedeA Standard Builders
MedeA Specialty Builders
Use MedeA’s Crystal Builder to edit and modify periodic structures retrieved from MedeA’s experimental structure databases. While this is the most convenient way of constructing a periodic structure in MedeA, you can also build crystalline systems from scratch by selecting the desired space group and adding elements at Wyckhoff positions. You may set or change cell parameters, replace or move atoms, set magnetic moments and masses, and freeze selected atomic degrees of freedom. Let MedeA determine a given system’s symmetry, while you choose an appropriate representation, i.e. P1, primitive cell, or highest available symmetry.
MedeA Crystal Builder features include:
MedeA Molecular Builder lets you import and edit molecular systems, or build them stepwise using the MedeA molecular fragment library. Simply paste SMILES code from external sources into the builder, and clean up the resulting molecular systems by running minimizations or short molecular dynamics interactively. Create periodic systems from molecules, or split periodic structures into molecular components. Use building blocks from MedeA’s fragment library to construct complex systems, define polymer backbones and store your own structures for later reference.
MedeA Molecular Builder features include:
Search for lowest lying conformers of any type of organic molecular input structure. Display selected systems or create a structure list from all results or selected subsets.
MedeA Conformer Search features include:
Learn more about the MedeA’s Conformer Search:
Use MedeA’s Supercell Builder to quickly generate larger cells, multiples of the chemical unit cell in selected directions. Build elongated cells by defining a range parameter or transform unit-cell coordinate axes to create a custom coordinate base.
MedeA Supercell Builder features include:
Use MedeA’s Special Quasi Random Structures (SQSs) as a simple means to model alloys. With a rather small number of atoms, SQSs mimic the physically most relevant radial correlation functions of a perfectly random structure. Simply select ‘SQS’ from the builder menu and edit starting lattice parameters.
MedeA SQS Builder features include:
The MedeA Polymer Builder creates models of isolated polymer chains, providing a foundation for building more complex models. Examples include bulk polymers, blends, solutions, or multiphase systems incorporating one or more interfacial regions.
MedeA Polymer Builder features include:
Learn more about MedeA’s Polymer Builder:
With MedeA’s Nanobuilder, you can construct nano-sized structures of various shapes. With just a few mouse clicks, build spheres, cylinders, tubes, wraps or wires by simply selecting from a handful of input parameters such as element type, chirality, orientation, packing and degree of nesting!
MedeA Nanobuilder features include:
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MedeA Surface Builder provides an intuitive way for constructing surface models by cleaving a bulk system. Start with a periodic chemical unit cell loaded from InfomaticA. Select cleavage direction, layer thickness and vacuum thickness. MedeA displays the corresponding surface slab model. If desired, use upper and lower cleavage planes to control surface termination, find new symmetry and apply to create your final surface slab model. Use cell transformation and supercell builder to increase surface plane area, e.g. for construction of adsorbate-adsorbent models.
MedeA Surface Builder features include:
MedeA Stack Layer Builder is designed for preparation of interface systems comprising two or more layers of materials. You may combine individual layers of amorphous and crystalline nature, solids, liquids, partially ordered liquid crystal systems and vacuum regions. The builder can process organic, inorganic or metallic systems.
MedeA Stack Layer Builder features include:
MedeA Substitutional Search Builder let’s you explore symmetry and structure of systems with substitutional defects. For any type of input systems MedeA lists symmetrically different structures as you replace 1, 2, or more element types. Sort the resulting list by relative weight, symmetry, number of atoms per cell or nearest neighbor distance.
MedeA Substitutional Search Builder features include:
MedeA Random Substitutions provides an intuitive way for creating defect or vacancy structures when one or larger numbers of elements need to be replaced. Define a set of rules to perform substitutions repeatedly, create multiple configurations and save results to structure lists for subsequent processing.
MedeA Random Substitutions features include:
The MedeA Amorphous Materials Builder lets you efficiently create condensed phase models based on system chemical composition and target density. It eliminates the need for lengthy mixing and amorphization simulations through realistic sampling of the translational, rotational, and conformational degrees of freedom of component species.
The MedeA Amorphous Materials Builder key benefits and features include:
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MedeA Thermoset Builder applies state-of-the-art methods for creating complex topologies of polymer networks in order to create strain-free molecular models with experimentally observed crosslink densities.
Key features include:
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The MedeA Interface Builder lets you create an explicit, atomic-scale interface from two surfaces, allowing for a predefined maximum in-plane mismatch between adjoining layers. The MedeA Interface Builder helps to identify and build twist grain boundaries as well as coherent, and/or semi-coherent interfaces. It produces periodic, commensurate cells, which may be used as direct input for MedeA’s compute work flows, engaging VASP, LAMMPS, or any other engine or building stage. Naturally, you can further edit interface structures in MedeA, e.g. by adding impurities, vacancies and interstitial defects as appropriate.
The MedeA Interface Builder key features include:
Learn more about the MedeA Interface Builder:
The MedeA Mesoscale Builder creates models for simulations on the time and length scale of microseconds and tens of nanometers. The models created can be used with other MedeA tools to build more complex systems, such as polymers or thermosets. Mesoscale bead definitions and parameters are provided for the MARTINI and SPICA forcefields.
The MedeA Mesoscale Builder key features include:
Learn more about the MedeA Mesoscale Builder:
The MedeA Microstructure Builder creates microstructure models for atomistic simulations using a Seed & Growth algorithm with starting points either placed randomly or at user-specified coordinates within a supercell. Each such point is used as an origin to grow a crystalline grain by adding atoms from that seed point outwards, until a grain boundary is encountered.
The models created by the MedeA Microstructure Builder can be used with other MedeA tools to explore the structural, energetic, and dynmical characteristics of microcrystalline materials.
The MedeA Microstructure Builder key features include:
Learn more about the MedeA Microstructure Builder: