Communications of the ACM
Mining for Gold With a Computer
Engineers from Texas A&M University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University used image-analysis software to gain new insights into nanoporous gold.
Credit: Johns Hopkins University
Engineers from Texas A&M University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University have used image-analysis software to gain new insights into nanoporous gold (NPG) by mining existing information on the material.
NPG has applications in a growing number of areas, including energy storage and biomedical devices.
Using 150 peer-reviewed papers, the software analyzed photographs of NPG, measuring key features that were correlated with written descriptions of how the samples were prepared. This helped the team learn how to make NPG with specific characteristics by changing processing times and temperatures.
The team also identified a new parameter related to NPG that could be used to adjust the material for specific applications.
Due to NPG's complex structure, measuring its features has been extremely difficult, but the new software simplifies the task. The researchers were able to look at about 80 data points, while earlier attempts relied on very small data sets of five or six data points.
From Texas A&M Engineering News
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