Inorganic homologous series forms solids with predictable structures

Structures

Source: © Hengdi Zhao et al/Science/AAAS

Newly uncovered structure–composition relationship could help to improve AI’s ability to predict new inorganic materials

An unusual new ‘homologous series’ of barium compounds forms a potentially infinite sequence of related structures with predictable unit cells. The US team behind this discovery says that understanding such structure–composition relationships could improve the ability of machine learning models to discover new inorganic materials.