VoltDeposit is a unique automated synthesis and analysis system for the discovery of multinary materials. The automated system is able to synthesise materials and analyse the performance of the materials. The VoltDeposit addresses one of the critical bottle necks in material discovery, in that the material space includes over 2 million materials which cannot be explored manually, and the discovery has to take place on automated platforms, with the data filtered through smart algorithms.
THE PROBLEM IN MATERIALS DISCOVERY
The number of possible multinary materials is virtually limitless, as the search space for combinations of three or more chemical elements is incredibly vast. The total number of possible multinary materials depends on several factors, including the number of elements available for combination, the composition ranges and constraints, and the specific properties or functionalities desired.
As an example, if we consider a system with 50 elements, which is a reasonable approximation of the number of naturally occurring elements in the Earth’s crust, the number of possible quinary (5-component) materials can be estimated using combinatorial mathematics. For a binary system, there are 1,225 possible combinations (50 choose 2), for a ternary system, there are 19,600 possible combinations (50 choose 3), and for a quaternary system, there are 211,876 possible combinations (50 choose 4). However, when we consider a quinary system, the number of possible combinations jumps to over 2 million (50 choose 5), and this number increases exponentially as more elements are added to the system.
Furthermore, this is just considering the number of possible combinations of elements, without taking into account the different compositions, structures, and processing conditions that can yield different material properties. Therefore, the actual number of possible multinary materials is much larger and largely unexplored, presenting both a promise and a challenge in the field of materials science and engineering. Advanced computational techniques, high-throughput experiments, and materials informatics are being used to accelerate the discovery and optimization of multinary materials in order to harness their potential for various applications.
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