At NanomatIA we will test AI-based strategies to accelerate the design and discovery of new materials in the energy storage sector.

The research and development of new materials with better and more sustainable properties is limited by the time and economic cost, as the different types of materials to be considered is incredibly large. Due to the demands for new products with advanced and sustainable properties, as well as changes in certain sectors, it is necessary to look for a new and accelerated way to synthesise materials suitable for the targeted performance.

Faced with this problem, Artificial Intelligence, starting from experimental and published data, can ‘fill in’ non-existent data on materials that have never been produced, predicting their properties, feeding the data back into algorithms, reinforcing predictions and knowledge, and even developing new possibilities on its own that human intuition would not reach.

And this is exactly what we are trying to solve at CETIM in our new NanomatIA project. In the research we will test strategies based on Artificial Intelligence developed by HI Iberia to accelerate the design and discovery of new materials in the energy storage sector. The project focuses on two main axes in order to achieve advanced properties that meet the demands of the current market: nano and biotechnology.

CETIM, coordinator of the scientific activity

From CETIM, in addition to coordinating the activity of the participating research organisations on NanomatIA, we will search for and develop nanomaterials based on lignin and cellulose, as well as their functionalisation for their future application in various elements of electrochemical cells. To achieve this, we will rely on different mechanical and chemical technologies and employ biotechnological methodologies, in collaboration with other project partners. In addition, we will also carry out electrochemical testing of the materials optimised throughout the project.

This research will contribute to implement reinforcement learning strategies through the integration of various Artificial Intelligence techniques. Therefore, AI agents will be created to accelerate and automate the process of discovery and design of advanced and sustainable materials (nano and biotechnology), thus maximising product efficiencies.

Rosalía Noguerol, Head of Advanced Materials at CETIM, explains: “The nanodimension of materials in components of an electrochemical cell brings great advantages, such as improvements in drastic volume modifications (this is the case of nanosilicon vs. macrometric silicon) or improvements in terms of electron transfer, shortening the ionic diffusion path, adaptation to volume changes in the cycling process, among others (this is the case of nanocellulose). In turn, biotechnology is a key enabling technology in the search for more cost-effective and sustainable products and processes, thus substituting resources with low availability or with serious toxicity connotations”.

“If we add to this the construction of a specific architecture of AI agents, we will be able to automatically discover and/or predict new configurations in electrochemical recipes for the main components of a cell,” confirms Rosalía, who “thanks to the combination of nanomaterials and biotechnology, will achieve cells with advanced and sustainable functionalities”.

In addition, to feed the construction of the architecture, specific Data Sets will be developed from NanomatIA experimental data and state-of-the-art data with information filtering in order to overcome the challenges of AI: sparsity and data quality.

 

NanomatIA (MCIU /AEI /10.13039/501100011033), has been subsidised by the State Innovation Agency (AEI), within the framework of the 2023 call for aid for research projects in strategic lines, which is supported by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and University, and forms part of a coordinated action within the framework of the Transmissions initiative, with the group of companies receiving funding from the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), within the 2023 call for “Science and Innovation Missions”.