Designing a unified data structure for solid-electrolyte research projects

We designed a data structure to promote the reuse of experimental data collected from multiple research institutions in a research project on solid electrolytes for next-generation batteries. Leveraging data from multiple research institutions is extremely challenging because the data formats and items differ, preventing their integration and joint use. Therefore, a data structure is required that meets the following criteria: (1) it is readily usable by researchers, (2) it introduces commonality into the data, and (3) it is easily understood by third parties. By analysing experimental data from several institutions, we decomposed each process into ‘elementary process units’ and proposed a ‘process‑chain’ data structure created by concatenating these units. Furthermore, by adopting RDE – the cloud‑based data acquisition system developed by NIMS – and linking the tabular format to the RDE format, we streamlined data collection and management. The proposed data structure is not limited to solid electrolytes but can also be applied to the management of experimental data for other materials, making it useful as a cross-disciplinary method for accumulating material data.