First Principles High Throughput Computing Platform for Solid Interface Friction Properties

With the in-depth study of friction at the electron scale, many remarkable research achievements have been made. Novel mechanisms such as pressure-induced superlubricity have opened up new possibilities for achieving superlubricity. However, the calculation of solid interface friction properties has long been constrained by tedious manual operations and low efficiency, requiring significant human effort from model construction to data post-processing. According to statistics, calculating the friction properties of a single interface system requires approximately 60 hours of manual work, severely hindering progress in this field. To address this bottleneck, the Data Center of the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, pioneered the development of the LICP-FPHTC-Platform, a high-throughput computing platform for solid interface friction properties, in 2022. This platform enables fully automated operations, covering key steps such as modeling, task submission and management, and data post-processing. It can automatically extract calculation results, fit data, plot potential energy surfaces, and ultimately output friction forces and friction coefficients. With this platform, research on solid interface friction properties has officially entered a new stage of automated, high-throughput computing. After three years of internal technical debugging and refinement, the platform has achieved stable operation and is now being open-sourced to serve peers in the field.