US institutions to build materials 'Gooqle'

摘要

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are to build a computer-based model for accelerating the development of new materials. The Materials Project starts from the premise that the new materials crucial to building a clean energy economy - for everything from batteries to photovoltaics to lighter weight vehicles - take on average 18 years from conception to commercialisation. "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 analyse the results, verify against experiments and increase their knowledge," says Kristin Persson, a Berkeley Lab chemist and one of the founding scientists behind the Materials Project.