This package provides a pair_style kim command which is a wrapper on the Knowledge Base for Interatomic Models (KIM) repository of interatomic potentials, so that they can be used by LAMMPS scripts.

Information about the KIM project can be found at https://openkim.org. The KIM project is lead by Ellad Tadmor and Ryan Elliott (U Minn) and James Sethna (Cornell U). Ryan Elliott is the main developer for the KIM API and he also maintains the code that implements the pair_style kim command.

Using this package requires the KIM library and its models (interatomic potentials) to be downloaded and installed on your system. The library can be downloaded and built in lib/kim or elsewhere on your system, which must be done before bulding LAMMPS with this package. Details of the download, build, and install process for KIM are given in the lib/kim/README file, and scripts will soon be provided to help automate the process. Also see the LAMMPS manual for general information on building LAMMPS with external libraries. The settings in the Makefile.lammps file in lib/kim must be correct for LAMMPS to build correctly with this package installed. However, the default settings should be correct in most cases and the Makefile.lammps file usually will not need to be changed.

Once you have successfully built LAMMPS with this package and the KIM library you can test it using an input file from the examples dir:

./lmp_serial < lammps/examples/kim/in.kim.lj

This pair_style was written by Valeriu Smirichinski and Ryan S. Elliott (U Minn).