SAN JOSE, Calif., June 24, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Intermolecular, Inc. (Nasdaq:IMI) announced today that it is working with the Materials Project at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab/MIT to accelerate the transition of new materials discoveries into practical applications. This is the first public-private effort to accelerate materials research and development (R&D) through the synergy of combinatorial experimentation and high-throughput computer simulations. Using data from Intermolecular's High Productivity Combinatorial (HPC™) experimentation platform, the Materials Project will augment and improve its materials modeling capabilities. These enhanced models will then be made available to the scientific community through the Materials Project.
This new effort supports the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI, visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp), a White House-launched public-private endeavor that aims to cut in half the time it takes to develop novel materials that can fuel advanced manufacturing and bolster the 21st century American economy.
Combinatorial approaches have been proven to accelerate R&D in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries by running hundreds or thousands of experiments at once in a high-throughput manner. Intermolecular leverages these same approaches in its HPC platform to accelerate advanced materials and electronic device development by 10-100x over conventional experimentation. The open-source Materials Project provides massively parallel computed data, analysis, and prediction capabilities. Independently, these techniques represent powerful tools to accelerate materials development in support of the MGI. Through this effort, real-world experimental data generated by Intermolecular's HPC platform will be provided to the Materials Project to enable the development of more predicative materials models.
"Access to high-quality experimental data is absolutely essential to benchmark high-throughput computational predictions for any application," said Dr. Kristin Persson, founder and Berkeley Labs team-lead for the Materials Project. "We begin every materials discovery project with a comparison to existing data before we venture into the space of undiscovered compounds. This is a first effort to integrate private sector experimental data into the Materials Project, and could form the basis of a general methodology for integrating experimental data inputs from a wide-range of scientific and industrial sources."
An initial study will validate how high-throughput experimentation and high-throughput simulation can be coordinated to yield new insights into a target material system. The results will pave the way to a larger pilot study over the coming year. Ultimately, this effort will result in better materials simulation capabilities, which will be available to the scientific community through the Materials Project. These enhanced simulation tools will lead to more sophisticated and informed experimental designs and accelerated transition of advanced materials discoveries across the "final mile" into practical applications.
"Integrating high-productivity combinatorial experimentation and high-throughput simulation in a hierarchical screening approach with feedback and feed-forward loops enables a virtuous cycle of learning," said Dr. Tony Chiang, chief technology officer of Intermolecular. "The Materials Project has provided a valuable theoretical resource for our technologists as they use our HPC R&D platform to accelerate the rate of learning in semiconductor and clean energy industries. Enhancing the materials modeling capabilities will benefit our customers along with the scientific community as a whole."
About Intermolecular, Inc.
Intermolecular® has pioneered a proprietary approach to accelerate research and development, innovation, and time-to-market for the semiconductor and clean energy industries. The approach consists of its proprietary High Productivity Combinatorial (HPC™) platform, coupled with its multi-disciplinary team. Through paid Collaborative Development Programs (CDPs) with its customers, Intermolecular develops proprietary technology and intellectual property for its customers focused on advanced materials, processes, integration and device architectures. Founded in 2004, Intermolecular is based in San Jose, California. "Intermolecular" and the Intermolecular logo are registered trademarks; and "HPC" is a trademark of Intermolecular, Inc.; all rights reserved. Learn more at www.intermolecular.com.