How to quickly discover new materials – ScienceDaily



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Much relies on new materials, including efficient energy conversion for tomorrow's environmentally friendly engines. According to a researcher, chance plays an important role today in the discovery of new materials. It describes how the material discovery process could be accelerated by combining combinatorial materials science with computational methods.

An unexplored cosmos of potential materials

The number of potential new materials that can be badembled from elements of the periodic table is immense – even if researchers were to limit themselves to 40 to 50 non-toxic, environmentally friendly elements and available in sufficient quantities on Earth. . These possibilities are still mostly unexplored.

New methods of manufacturing such materials open up new possibilities for a more efficient approach. "By simultaneously depositing atoms of three or more directions on a substrate, we produce what are called libraries of thin-film materials," Alfred Ludwig explains.

High throughput screening

In order to make these libraries usable, not only must they be manufactured in high throughput processes, but effective methods must also be deployed to badyze the properties of the materials. This is the only way to know if the library contains a composition of materials offering interesting properties for a potential application. "In order to accelerate the entire process of discovering new materials, measurements and badysis should ideally be automated," says Ludwig.

He would like the use of a database to be at least partially automated, in order to maintain control over the huge volumes of expected hardware data. "It is also important that these data are compatible for use by research groups from different disciplines," he said. The documentation must be done not only for the data of compositions of elements that seem particularly promising, but also for all the others. "The goal of this approach is to facilitate machine learning and to allow artificial intelligence to facilitate the search for new materials," concludes Ludwig.

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Material provided by Ruhr University in Bochum. Note: Content can be changed for style and length.

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