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Despite the acknowledged capability of template-free models in exploring unseen reaction spaces compared to template-based models for retrosynthesis prediction, their ability to venture beyond established boundaries remains relatively uncharted. In this study, we empirically assess the extrapolation capability of state-of-the-art template-free models by meticulously assembling an extensive set of out-of-distribution (OOD) reactions. Our findings demonstrate that while template-free models exhibit potential in predicting precursors with novel synthesis rules, their top-10 exact-match accuracy in OOD reactions is strikingly modest (< 1%). Furthermore, despite the capability of generating novel reactions, our investigation highlights a recurring issue where more than half of the novel reactions predicted by template-free models are chemically implausible. Consequently, we advocate for the future development of template-free models that integrate considerations of chemical feasibility when navigating unexplored regions of reaction space.

The realization of quantum advantage with noisy-intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) machines has become one of the major challenges in computational sciences. Maintaining coherence of a physical system with more than ten qubits is a critical challenge that motivates research on compact system representations to reduce algorithm complexity. Toward this end, quantum simulations based on the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) is considered to be one of the most promising algorithms for quantum chemistry in the NISQ era. We investigate reduced mapping of one spatial orbital to a single qubit to analyze the ground state energy in a way that the Pauli operators of qubits are mapped to the creation/annihilation of singlet pairs of electrons. To include the effect of non-bosonic (or non-paired) excitations, we introduce a simple correction scheme in the electron correlation model approximated by the geometrical mean of the bosonic (or paired) terms. Employing it in a VQE algorithm, we assess ground state energies of H2O, N2, and Li2O in good agreements with full configuration interaction (FCI) models respectively, using only 6, 8, and 12 qubits with quantum gate depths proportional to the squares of the qubit counts. With the adopted seniority-zero approximation that uses only one half of the qubit counts of a conventional VQE algorithm, we find our non-bosonic correction method reaches reliable quantum chemistry simulations at least for the tested systems.

Realizing general inverse design could greatly accelerate the discovery of new materials with user-defined properties. However, state-of-the-art generative models tend to be limited to a specific composition or crystal structure. Herein, we present a framework capable of general inverse design (not limited to a given set of elements or crystal structures), featuring a generalized invertible representation that encodes crystals in both real and reciprocal space, and a property-structured latent space from a variational autoencoder (VAE). In three design cases, the framework generates 142 new crystals with user-defined formation energies, bandgap, thermoelectric (TE) power factor, and combinations thereof. These generated crystals, absent in the training database, are validated by first-principles calculations. The success rates (number of first-principles-validated target-satisfying crystals/number of designed crystals) ranges between 7.1% and 38.9%. These results represent a significant step toward property-driven general inverse design using generative models, although practical challenges remain when coupled with experimental synthesis.

The constant demand for new functional materials calls for efficient strategies to accelerate the materials design and discovery. In addressing this challenge, machine learning generative models can offer promising opportunities since they allow for the continuous navigation of chemical space via low dimensional latent spaces. In this work, we employ a crystal representation that is inversion-free with a low memory requirement based on unit cell information and fractional atomic coordinates, and build the generative adversarial network (GAN) for crystal structures. The proposed model is then applied to the Mg-Mn-O ternary inorganic materials system to generate novel structures with application as potential water-splitting photoanodes, and combined with the evaluation of their photoanode properties for high-throughput virtual screening (HTVS). The generative-HTVS system that we built predicts 23 new crystal structures with a reasonable predicted stability and bandgap. These findings suggest that the proposed generative model can be an effective way to explore hidden portions of the chemical space, an area that is usually unreachable when conventional substitution-based discovery is employed.

In conventional chemisorption model, the d-band center theory (augmented sometimes with the upper edge of d-band for imporved accuarcy) plays a central role in predicting adsorption energies and catalytic activity as a function of d-band center of the solid surfaces, but it requires density functional calculations that can be quite costly for large scale screening purposes of materials. In this work, we propose to use the d-band width of the muffin-tin orbital theory (to account for local coordination environment) plus electronegativity (to account for adsorbate renormalization) as a simple set of alternative descriptors for chemisorption, which do not demand the ab initio calculations. This pair of descriptors are then combined with machine learning methods, namely, artificial neural network (ANN) and kernel ridge regression (KRR), to allow large scale materials screenings. We show, for a toy set of 263 alloy systems, that the CO adsorption energy can be predicted with a remarkably small mean absolute deviation error of 0.05 eV, a significantly improved result as compared to 0.13 eV obtained with descriptors including costly d-band center calculations in literature. We achieved this high accuracy by utilizing an active learning algorithm, without which the accuracy was 0.18 eV otherwise. As a practical application of this machine, we identified Cu3Y@Cu as a highly active and cost-effective electrochemical CO2 reduction catalyst to produce CO with the overpotential 0.37 V lower than Au catalyst., Comment: Under review and including Electronic Supplementary Information (ESI)