Artificial Intelligence for Materials Discovery

The software-driven successes of deep learning have been profound, but the real world is made of materials. Researchers are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to help find new materials to provide better electronics and transportation, and the energy to run them. Despite its undeniable power, however, "Machine learning, especially the deep learning revolution, relies heavily on large amounts of data," said Carla Gomes, a computer scientist at Cornell University. "This is not how science works. "Machine learning as we know it is not enough for scientific discovery," she said. "We still have a long way to go." Nevertheless, researchers are off to a promising start in addressing materials science. One of the challenges in materials discovery is the astronomical number of compositions that might have interesting properties. "High-entropy alloys" (HEA), for example, combine four or more metals. "If you consider all the elements in the periodic table and you will find that you have ...