A research team which included Professor Daisuke Tanaka, of the Kwansei Gakuin University School of Science, and Professor Akinori Saeki, of the Osaka University Graduate School of Engineering, succeeded in developing an efficient method for searching for synthesis conditions for organic-inorganic composite materials called coordination polymers. Furthermore, it was found that the synthesized coordination polymers are ambipolar, transporting both electrons and holes, and exhibit photoconductive properties that allow them to conduct electricity when irradiated with light.

Coordination polymers, which are composed of metal ions and organic ligands, have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years as new materials that combine the properties of inorganic and organic materials. In this research project, the team applied a materials informatics method using machine learning—a type of artificial intelligence (AI)—to the synthesis of coordination polymers using sulfur as a coordination element, which is generally considered to be difficult to synthesize, and succeeded in efficiently developing new semiconductor coordination polymers. This use of this method is expected to facilitate the discovery of new catalysts and photoelectric conversion materials.

The results of the research were published online in the Angewandte Chemie International Edition, an German synthetic chemistry journal, on August 24. A link to the article can be found below.

Machine-Learning-Assisted Selective Synthesis of Semiconductive Silver Thiolate Coordination Polymer with Segregated Paths for Holes and Electrons