Finetuning-Free Diffusion Model with Adaptive Constraint Guidance for Inorganic Crystal Structure Generation

Abstract

Generative diffusion models have emerged as powerful tools for the discovery of inorganic crystal structures, yet steering their sampling process toward user-defined physical and chemical objectives remains challenging. We present a computational framework that integrates adaptive constraint guidance into a pre-trained crystal diffusion model, enabling the generation of candidate structures that satisfy targeted structural and chemical requirements without model retraining. The approach incorporates differentiable constraint functions directly during sampling, providing an interpretable mechanism for expert-driven exploration of the crystal structure space. To assess the reliability of generated candidates, we introduce a multi-stage validation workflow combining descriptor-based analysis, duplicate removal, comparison with reference crystal databases, graph neural network energy prediction, and thermodynamic stability evaluation through convex-hull analysis. The framework is applied to several classes of inorganic compounds and to constraints involving atomic volume, local coordination environments, and near-neighbor structural motifs. Results demonstrate that adaptive guidance effectively redirects the sampling distribution toward structures exhibiting the desired characteristics while preserving chemical plausibility. Subsequent validation reveals which generated candidates remain viable after energetic and thermodynamic screening. The proposed methodology provides a practical and transparent strategy for incorporating expert knowledge into crystal generative models and establishes a general computational framework for constrained materials discovery.