Communications of the ACM
Supercomputers Accelerate Development of Advanced Materials
Berkeley Lab scientist Kristin Persson co-founded the Materials Project to accelerate discovery of new materials.
Credit: Courtesy of Roy Kaltschmidt/Berkeley Lab
Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have launched the Materials Project, which aims to accelerate the process for finding new materials to be used in a clean energy technology.
"Our vision is for this tool to become a dynamic ‘Google’ of material properties, which continually grows and changes as more users come on board to analyze the results, verify against experiments, and increase their knowledge," says Berkeley Lab's Kristin Persson.
The researchers are using supercomputers to characterize the properties of inorganic compounds, including their stability, voltage, capacity, and oxidation state. The results are organized into a database with a Web interface that gives the researchers access to the data.
"First-principles calculations have reached the point of accuracy where many materials properties, relevant for photovoltaics, batteries, and thermoelectrics, can be reliably predicted," says MIT professor Gerbrand Ceder.
U.S. President Obama recently launched the Materials Genome Initiative, which aims to double the speed with which new materials are discovered, developed, and manufactured. "The Materials Project represents the next generation of the original Materials Genome Project," says National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center's Shreyas Cholia.
From Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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