Conspectus
Polymeric material research is encountering
a new paradigm driven
by machine learning (ML) and big data. The ML-assisted design has
proven to be a successful approach for designing novel high-performance
polymeric materials. This goal is mainly achieved through the following
procedure: structure representation and database construction, establishment
of a ML-based property prediction model, virtual design and high-throughput
screening. The key to this approach lies in training ML models that
delineate structure–property relationships based on available
polymer data (e.g., structure, component, and property data), enabling
the screening of promising polymers that satisfy the targeted property
requirements. However, the relative scarcity of high-quality polymer
data and the complex polymeric multiscale structure–property
relationships pose challenges for this ML-assisted design method,
such as data and modeling challenges.
In this Account, we summarize
the state-of-the-art advancements
concerning the ML-assisted design of polymeric materials. Regarding
structure representation and database construction, the digital representations
of polymers are the predominant methods in cheminformatics along with
some newly developed methods that integrate the polymeric multiscale
structure characteristics. When establishing a ML-based property prediction
model, the key is choosing and optimizing ML models to attain high-precision
predictions across a vast chemical structure space. Advanced ML algorithms,
such as transfer learning and multitask learning, have been utilized
to address the data and modeling challenges. During the ML-assisted
screening process, by defining and combining polymer genes, virtual
polymer candidates are generated, and subsequently, their properties
are predicted and high-throughput screened using ML property prediction
models. Finally, the promising polymers identified through this approach
are verified by computer simulations and experiments.
We provide
an overview of our recent efforts toward developing
ML-assisted design approaches for discovering advanced polymeric materials
and emphasize the intricate nature of polymer structural design. To
well describe the multiscale structures of polymers, new structure
representation methods, such as polymer fingerprint and cross-linking
descriptors, were developed. Moreover, a multifidelity learning method
was proposed to leverage the multisource isomerous polymer data from
experiments and simulations. Additionally, graph neural networks and
Bayesian optimization methods have been developed and applied for
predicting polymer properties as well as designing polymer structures
and compositions.
Finally, we identify the current challenges
and point out the development
directions in this emerging field. It is highly desirable to establish
new structure representation and advanced ML modeling methods for
polymeric materials, particularly when constructing polymer large
models based on chemical language. Through this Account, we seek to
stimulate further ...