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Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the development of new materials. A prerequisite for AI in materials research is large-scale use and exchange of data on materials, which is facilitated by a broad international standard. A major international collaboration, which includes ������ Bye Fellow , now presents an extended version of the OPTIMADE standard.

New technologies in areas such as energy and sustainability involving for example batteries, solar cells, LED lighting and biodegradable materials require new materials. Many researchers around the world are working to create materials that have not existed before. But there are major challenges in creating materials with the exact properties required, such as not containing environmentally hazardous substances and at the same time being durable enough to not break down.

“We’re now seeing an explosive development where researchers in materials science are adopting AI methods from other fields and also developing their own models to use in materials research. Using AI to predict properties of different materials opens up completely new possibilities,” says Rickard Armiento, associate professor at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM) at Linköping University in Sweden. 

The OPTIMADE (Open databases integration for materials design) standard has been developed over the past eight years. Behind this standard is a large international network with over 30 institutions worldwide and large materials databases in Europe and the USA. The aim is to give users easier access to both leading and lesser-known materials databases. A new version of the standard, v1.2, is now being released, and is described in an article published in the journal Digital Discovery. One of the biggest changes in the new version is a greatly enhanced possibility to accurately describe different material properties and other data using common, well-founded definitions.

The international collaboration spans the EU, the UK, the US, Mexico, Japan and China together with institutions such as École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), University of California Berkeley, University of Cambridge, Northwestern University, Duke University, Paul Scherrer Institut, and Johns Hopkins University. Much of the collaboration takes place in meetings with annual workshops funded by CECAM (Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire) in Switzerland, with the first one funded by the Lorentz Center in the Netherlands. Other activities have been supported by the organisation Psi-k, the competence centre NCCR MARVEL in Switzerland, and the e-Science Research Centre (SeRC) in Sweden. The researchers in the collaboration receive support from many different financiers.

The standard is available at:

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