Interatomic potential for the calculation of barrier distributions in amorphous oxides

Amorphous oxides are important for implants, optics, and gate insulators. Understanding the effects of oxide doping is crucial to optimize performance. Here we report energy barrier distributions for amorphous tantala and doped oxides using a new set of computationally efficient, two-body potentials that reproduce the structural properties of the samples. The distributions can be directly compared to experiment and used to calculate physical quantities such as internal friction.