NEC Laboratories Advances Material Design with AI-based MateriAI Platform

March 14, 2024||inNews|tagsMateriAI, ai, machine learning

HEIDELBERG, Germany – NEC Laboratories Europe and NEC Laboratories America have developed MateriAI, an AI-based, material design platform that accelerates the development of new, environmentally friendly materials. The prototype platform was initially designed to overcome major hurdles in the creation of new synthetic, organic and bio-based polymers, such as rubber and plastics.

Koichi Funaya, Chief Technology Architect at NEC Laboratories Europe, explains: “To develop any new material, scientists must first navigate the often exhaustive amount of existing information about related materials and then short-list potential new molecular structures for the development of new materials. MateriAI transforms this process by making it much faster, semi-automating the aggregation of data, while using AI to suggest new polymers for material design.”

MateriAI uses a purpose-built, polymer-based large language model to gather polymer information, then applies physics-informed machine learning to capture its complexity, including the micro- and macro-level structures of polymers.

NEC Laboratories Advances Material Design with AI-based MateriAI Platform

Figure 1: MateriAI material design workflow

The platform’s large language model is trained on a vast number of resources to collect and link material knowledge, critical design information and processes – greatly enriching the information used for new material design.

Standard analytical computational approaches, even when using high-performance computing, are inadequate to handle the complexity of bio-material structures. However, improvements in how MateriAI processes complex information enables the platform to run on CPU- and GPU-based computer systems designed for standard computational workloads.

Says Funaya: “Many organic polymers have long, intertwined polymer chains, which makes calculating their potential interaction with other polymers difficult. A vast amount of supporting information about the manufacturing processes must also be considered. For example, when developing new types of rubber, the relationship between polymer chains, fillers and additives in rubber mixtures – and the cross-linking of rubber materials – all need to be understood.”

Based on its large language model, MateriAI integrates these layers of complexity and uses physics-informed machine learning to provide insights into the creation of new materials. This approach eliminates the need for a complex natural language processing pipeline.

Using the platform’s intuitive user interface, users enter the mechanical, temperature and electrical properties of the polymer they would like to develop, including any conditions for its manufacturing methods. Candidate molecules are displayed visually, and conditions can be updated on the fly. Changes to models are displayed in real time.

Martin Renqiang Min NEC Labs America

Dr. Martin Renqiang Min, Department Head of Machine Learning at NEC Laboratories America says: “MateriAI learns with even the smallest amount of data and applies physics-informed machine learning to accurately predict physical material properties. The platform lets material scientists focus on material-design tasks, removing the burden of background investigation and material property predictions.”

This approach is a radical departure from previous material-design frameworks, letting material scientists design materials for use cases where a large part of the existing material knowledge is unknown.

In the coming months, NEC will expand its customer trial of MateriAI within the polymer market and extend its application to other industries. A commercial launch of the prototype platform is planned within the next 12 months.

About NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH
NEC Laboratories Europe research and develop cutting-edge technology to create innovative social solutions. Located in Heidelberg, Germany, major research areas of NEC Laboratories Europe include artificial intelligence, blockchain security, 5G and 6G networks, and IoT platforms. These technologies promote NEC Group solutions for a better society in the fields of digital health, safer cities, public services and communication infrastructure. For more information visit https://www.neclab.eu.

About NEC Laboratories America
NEC Laboratories America, Inc. (NEC Labs) is the US-based center for NEC Corporation’s global network of corporate research laboratories. Their diverse research groups collaborate with industry, academia and governments to provide disruptive solutions to complex problems. A leader in the integration of IT and network technologies with more than 100 years of expertise, NEC provides a combination of products and solutions that cross-utilize the company’s experience and global resources to meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers.

Read Our News Posts

Industrial Labs to Drive Disruptive Innovation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Blog Post

Industrial Labs to Drive Disruptive Innovation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

While the previous generation of industrial progress brought us new capabilities, efficiencies, and even delight through digital transformation, we’re entering a new era of innovation, opportunity, and disruption: the Fourth Industrial Revolution. What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
Read more
Haven for Hope

A New Hope: AI Research is Conquering Today’s Computer Vision Plateau

The age of computer vision is upon us, and it’s transforming the way we live, work and interact with the world. Nearly every industry has found a use case to grow revenue, reduce cost, or create exceptional experiences using computer vision. From self-driving cars to retail automation, surgeons to farmers, computer vision is everywhere, providing critical insights that are driving progress in virtually every aspect of our daily lives. Today, images and videos are annotated to train artificial intelligence (AI) models to recognize specific objects, but there is still so much more to be done when it comes to understanding what those objects are doing in real-time.
Read more
Our Time Series Data Research Drives Space Systems Innovation

NEC Labs America’s Time Series Data Research Drives Space Systems Innovation

With decreasing hardware costs and increasing demand for autonomic management, many of today’s physical systems are equipped with an extensive network of sensors, generating a considerable amount of time series data daily. A highly valuable source of information, time series data is used by businesses and governments to measure and analyze change over time in complex systems. Organizations must consolidate, integrate and organize a vast amount of time series data from multiple sources to generate insights and business value.
Read more
Next-Generation Computing Finally Sees Light Blog Post

Next-Generation Computing Finally Sees Light

Moore's law is dead, as we have squeezed all the innovation out of silicon. Fiber optics is the solution to meet the computing needs of tomorrow. Today, we can already use the light traveling inside fiber optic cables as sensors that measure vibrations, sound, temperature, light, and pressure changes. We're now developing the means to take this to the next level with photonic computing at the speed of light to provide faster reaction time, reduce energy consumption and improve battery range
Read more
Using AI To Safely Put The First Woman On The Moon

Using AI To Safely Put The First Woman On The Moon

We are helping to safely bring the first woman astronaut to the moon as part of NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Artemis Project with our System Invariant Analysis Technology (SIAT). With Lockheed Martin Space's T-Tauri AI platform, our SIAT analytics engine takes the data from the 150,000 sensors and creates a model incorporating over 22 billion data relationships. The AI model is then analyzed to find any irregularities which could lead to a possible malfunction of any of the spacecraft's systems.
Read more

Our AI Research Contributing to NASA’s Artemis Space Program

By 2024, the spacecraft "Orion" developed by Lockheed Martin will bring humans to the moon in NASA's Artemis program. The system invariant analysis technology, one of NEC's Artificial Intelligence technologies, will perform checks to ensure that the spacecraft is tested and operating properly during the production phase.
Read more