Artificial intelligence models that turn text into images are also useful for generating new materials. During the last few years, generative materials models from companies like Google, Microsoft, and Meta have drawn on their training data to help researchers design tens of millions of new materials.

But when it comes to designing materials with exotic quantum properties like superconductivity or unique magnetic states, those models struggle. That’s too bad, because humans could use the help. For example, after a decade of research into a class of materials that could revolutionize quantum computing, called quantum spin liquids, only a dozen material candidates have been identified. The bottleneck means there are fewer materials to serve as the basis for technological breakthroughs.

Now, MIT researchers have developed a technique in which popular generative materials models create promising quantum materials by following specific design rules. The rules, or constraints, steer models to create materials with unique structures that give rise to quantum properties.

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