Developing new materials can involve a dizzying amount of trial and error for different configurations and elements. Artificial intelligence (AI) has seen a surge of popularity in energy materials research for its potential to streamline this time-consuming process. However, fully autonomous workflows that connect high-precision experimental knowledge to the discovery of credible new energy-related materials remain at an early stage.

A team of researchers at the WPI-Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR), Tohoku University, created the Descriptive Interpretation of Visual Expression (DIVE) multi-agent workflow to streamline the material research process. The system extracts information from images in a database of over 30,000 entries from 4,000 scientific publications to propose new materials within minutes.

The findings were published in Chemical Science.