The Materials Project is a multi-institution, multi-national effort to compute the properties of all inorganic materials and provide the data and associated analysis algorithms for every materials researcher free of charge. The ultimate goal of the initiative is to drastically reduce the time needed to invent new materials by focusing costly and time-consuming experiments on compounds that show the most promise computationally.

Software

By computing properties of all known materials, the Materials Project aims to remove guesswork from materials design in a variety of applications. Experimental research can be targeted to the most promising compounds from computational data sets. Researchers will be able to data-mine scientific trends in materials properties. By providing materials researchers with the information they need to design better, the Materials Project aims to accelerate innovation in materials research.

Supercomputing

Supercomputing clusters at national laboratories provide the infrastructure that enables our computations, data, and algorithms to run at unparalleled speed. We principally use the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's NERSC Scientific Computing Center and Computational Research Division, but we are also active with Oak Ridge's OLCF Argonne's ALCF and San Diego's SDSC

Screening

Computational materials science is now powerful enough that it can predict many properties of materials before those materials are ever synthesized in the lab. By scaling materials computations over supercomputing clusters, we have predicted several new battery materials which were made and tested in the lab. Recently, we have also identified new transparent conducting oxides and thermoelectric materials using this approach.