Berkeley Lab scientists increase by almost ten-fold the data
previously available.
(April 6, 2015) Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have published the world’s largest set of
data on the complete elastic properties of inorganic compounds, increasing by
an order of magnitude the number of compounds for which such data exists.
This new data set is expected to be a boon to materials
scientists working on developing new materials where mechanical properties are
important, such as for hard coatings, or stiff materials for cars and
airplanes. While there is previously published experimental data for
approximately a few hundred inorganic compounds, Berkeley Lab scientists, using
the infrastructure of the Materials Project, have calculated the complete
elastic properties for 1,181 inorganic compounds, with dozens more being added
every week.