Pure and Hybrid Evolutionary Computing in Global Optimization of Chemical Structures: from Atoms and Molecules to Clusters and Crystals

The growth of evolutionary computing (EC) methods in the exploration of complex potential energy landscapes of atomic and molecular clusters, as well as crystals over the last decade or so is reviewed. The trend of growth indicates that pure as well as hybrid evolutionary computing techniques in conjunction of DFT has been emerging as a powerful tool, although work on molecular clusters has been rather limited so far. Some attempts to solve the atomic/molecular Schrodinger Equation (SE) directly by genetic algorithms (GA) are available in literature. At the Born-Oppenheimer level of approximation GA-density methods appear to be a viable tool which could be more extensively explored in the coming years, specially in the context of designing molecules and materials with targeted properties.