U.S.-based venture company Citrine Informatics Inc., a specialist in materials development, is advancing its business with impressive results. The company runs simulations with huge quantities of data to select candidate materials likely to satisfy client demand for certain characteristics.
A company representative says this process can shorten its clients’ development periods by 50–70 percent. The technology is being marketed toward the development of materials for lithium-ion secondary batteries (LiBs), fragrances and more.
Citrine Informatics works with material development in a wide range of fields. This includes LiBs for electric vehicles – an area where demand is surging. In this field, the company responds to various demands to assist in making drastic improvements to battery service life, voltage, heat resistance and other performance metrics.
One unique strength of the company is its ability to order deeply specialized battery data from universities and other research institutions, then provide results by analyzing this data using machine learning and materials informatics (MI) technology. Another benefit lies in the company’s specialization: unlike regular data scientists, it is utterly devoted to materials development, a representative said.
MI technology is being actively introduced in a number of countries, including the U.S. and China. But Citrine Informatics sees Japan, which possesses a wealth of experimental data, as having a particular edge in the field.
Citrine Informatics CEO Greg Mulholland previously majored in MI at England’s Cambridge University. His company sets itself apart from more general AI businesses that handle data such as customer information, with the U.S venture instead focusing on running simulations using highly specialized chemical data.
Source: Japan Chemical Daily