Turning Statistical Physics Models Into Materials Design Engines

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formalism that transforms statistical physics models into automatic optimizers for material design, enabling faster and more effective solutions to complex inverse problems in materials science.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel formalism that extends statistical mechanics to generate optimizers automatically, improving efficiency and applicability over existing black-box methods.

Findings

Generated optimizers outperform standard black-box methods in speed and effectiveness

The approach is straightforward to implement and applicable to equilibrium and non-equilibrium materials

Enables solving complex inverse design problems in materials science

Abstract

Despite the success statistical physics has enjoyed at predicting the properties of materials for given parameters, the inverse problem, identifying which material parameters produce given, desired properties, is only beginning to be addressed. Recently, several methods have emerged across disciplines that draw upon optimization and simulation to create computer programs that tailor material responses to specified behaviors. However, so far the methods developed either involve black-box techniques, in which the optimizer operates without explicit knowledge of the material's configuration space, or they require carefully tuned algorithms with applicability limited to a narrow subclass of materials. Here we introduce a formalism that can generate optimizers automatically by extending statistical mechanics into the realm of design. The strength of this new approach lies in its capability to transform statistical models that describe materials into optimizers to tailor them. By comparing against standard black-box optimization methods, we demonstrate how optimizers generated by this formalism can be faster and more effective, while remaining straightforward to implement. The scope of our approach includes new possibilities for solving a variety of complex optimization and design problems concerning materials both in and out of equilibrium.