Can artificial intelligence open new doors for materials discovery?
June 16, 2021
by Dave Bukey, Argonne National Laboratory
The future of clean energy is hot. Temperatures hit 800 Celsius in parts of solar energy plants and advanced nuclear reactors. Finding materials that can stand that type of heat is tough. So experts look to Mark Messner for answers.
A principal mechanical engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Messner is among a group of engineers who are discovering better ways to predict how materials will behave under high temperatures and pressures. The current prediction methods work well, but they take time and often require supercomputers, especially if you already have a set of specific material properties—e.g., stiffness, density or strength—and want to find out what type of structure a material would need to match those properties.
