Perturbo is a materials science software package for exploring materials.
A new piece of software developed at Caltech makes it easier to study the behavior of electrons in materials, even materials that have been predicted but do not yet exist. The software, called Perturbo, is gaining traction among researchers.
Perturbo calculates at a quantum level how electrons interact and move within a material, providing useful microscopic details about so-called electron dynamics. This kind of simulation allows researchers to predict how well something like a metal or semiconductor will conduct electricity at a given temperature, or how the electrons in a material will respond to light, for example. The software now has roughly 250 active users, says Marco Bernardi, assistant professor of applied physics and materials science. Perturbo was developed by Bernardi’s lab, in a team effort led by Bernardi and Jin-Jian Zhou, a former postdoctoral scholar who is now an assistant professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
This Caltech software is a further indication that electronic analysis is going beyond silicon-based chips towards the quantum scale, including crystalline structures. Here is graphene, single layer of carbon atoms.
Web reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene
Web Reference 2: https://phys.org/news/2021-04-tool-materials-physics-popularity.html