April AMP_Digital

A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | A P R I L 2 0 1 9 1 2 AI FOR NEW MATERIALS Researchers at the Technical Uni- versity of Denmark and Aalto Univer- sity, Finland, built an artificial intelli- gence (AI) to enable development of new technologies from wearable elec- tronics to flexible solar panels. ARTIST, which stands for artificial intelligence for spectroscopy, instantly determines how a molecule will react to light— important knowledge for creating the designer materials needed for future technologies. With its speed and accuracy, ART- IST has the potential to accelerate de- velopment of flexible electronics, inclu- ding LEDs or paper with screen-like abil- ities. Complementing basic research and characterization in the lab, ARTIST may also hold the key to producing bet- ter batteries and catalysts. The multidisciplinary team train- ed the AI in just a few weeks with a dataset of more than 132,000 organic molecules. ARTIST can predict with ex- ceedingly high accuracy just how those molecules—and those similar in na- ture—will react to a stream of light. “Enormous amounts of spec- troscopy information sit in labs around the world. We want to keep training ARTIST with further large datasets so that it can one day learn continuously as more and more data comes in,” says Aalto re- searcher Patrick Rinke. The researchers aim to release ARTIST on an open science plat- form in 2019 and it is currently avail- able for use and further training upon request. www.aalto.fi; www.dtu.dk . NEW SELF-HEALING MATERIAL DISCOVERY Over the past decade, self-heal- ing materials have become a popular area of research. Most of the self-heal- ing materials reported to date have relied on sophisticated designs that incorporate chemical mechanisms into polymer networks. As a result, they re- quire some external stimulus, such as heat or pressure, to prompt them to heal. Now, a research group from RIKEN and Kyushu University, Japan, discov- ered a new type of material based on ethylene, which overcomes some of the previous challenges of developing self-healing materials. The new mate- rial exhibits a number of useful prop- erties such as shape memory and can spontaneously self-heal even in water or acidic and alkali solutions. The researchers used a catalyst based on scandium to create polymers composed of alternating sequences of ethylene and anisylpropylenes and shorter ethylene-ethylene segments by EMERGING TECHNOLOGY Boston Metal raised $20 million in funding to accelerate the first industrial-scale deployments of its proprietary mol- ten oxide electrolysis (MOE) technology for the production of ferroalloys. The company’s MOE process uses electricity to transformmetals from their raw oxide form into molten metal products. bostonmetal.com. BRIEF the copolymerization of ethylene and anisylpropylenes. This new class of well-defined, functionalized polyole- fins ranged from soft viscoelastic ma- terials to tough elastomers, which can be stretched but return to their orig- inal shapes, and rigid plastics. The elastomer copolymers were both very elastic and tough, and also showed remarkable self-healing properties, as they autonomously self-healed when subjected to mechanical damage—not only in a dry environment but also in water and aqueous acid and alkaline solutions, without the need for any ex- ternal energy or stimulus. www.riken.jp ; www.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en. Illustration courtesy of Aalto University. Top panel: Optical microscope images of damaged (left) and repaired (right) samples of one of the materials in air at 25°C. A filmwas cracked by razor blade and then left in air for 5 minutes for healing. Bottompanel: Optical microscope images of damaged (left) and repaired (right) samples of one of the films in water at 25°C. The filmwas cracked by a razor blade and then left in water for 5 minutes for healing.