Collaborative AI tool accelerates material discoveries

The new tool has led to the discovery of four new materials including a new family of solid-state materials that conduct lithium, an advance that is key to the development of solid-state batteries offering longer range and increased safety for electric vehicles. Further promising materials are said to be in development. The Liverpool team’s findings are detailed in Nature Communications.

The tool brings together AI with human knowledge to prioritise those parts of unexplored chemical space where new functional materials are most likely to be found.

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According to the University, discovering new functional materials is a high-risk, complex and frequently long process as there is an infinite space of possible materials accessible by combining all of the elements in the periodic table, and it is not known where new materials exist.

The new AI tool was developed by a team of researchers from Liverpool University’s Department of Chemistry and Materials Innovation Factory, led by Professor Matt Rosseinsky, to address this challenge.