Deep Learning Based Prediction of Perovskite Lattice Parameters from Hirshfeld Surface Fingerprints

This Letter describes the use of deep learning methods on Hirshfeld surface representations of crystal structure, as an automated means of predicting lattice parameters in cubic inorganic perovskites. While Hirshfeld Surface Analysis is a well-established tool in organic crystallography, we also introduce modified computational protocols for Hirshfeld Surface Analysis tailored specifically to account for nuanced but important differences dealing with inorganic crystals. We demonstrate how two-dimensional Hirshfeld surface fingerprints can serve as a rich “database” of information encoding the complexity of relationships between chemical bonding and bond geometry characteristics of perovskites. Our results are compared with other studies on lattice parameter prediction involving both experimental and computationally derived data, and it is shown that our approach is an improvement over other reported methods. The paper concludes by discussing how this work opens new avenues for data-driven high throughput computational predictions of structure–property relationships involving complex crystal chemistries.