Polymer Informatics: Current Status & Critical Next Steps

The launching of Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) in 2011 has marked a milestone of materials informatics, after which materials design underwent a paradigm transform. Among notable applications within this research and development area, the successful deployment of novel materials has been greatly accelerated by the use of computational, experimental and informatics methodologies. Here, we describe our recent polymer discovery efforts, highlighting the role played by computational data generation and screening, targeted synthesis and characterization, polymer fingerprinting and machine-learning prediction models. These efforts have culminated in the creation of an online Polymer Informatics platform (https://www.polymergenome.org) to guide ongoing and future polymer discovery and design. Challenges that remain are examined, and systematic steps that may be taken to extend the applicability of such informatics efforts to a wide range of technological domains are discussed. This work is supported by Office of Naval Research.