Developing a complete AI-accelerated workflow for superconductor discovery

The quest to identify new superconducting materials with enhanced properties is hindered by the prohibitive cost of computing electron-phonon spectral functions, severely limiting the materials space that can be explored. Here, we introduce a Bootstrapped Ensemble of Equivariant Graph Neural Networks (BEE-NET), a machine-learning model trained to predict the Eliashberg spectral function and superconducting critical temperature with a mean-absolute-error of 0.87 K relative to DFT-based Allen-Dynes calculations. Intriguingly, BEE-NET achieves a true-negative-rate of 99.4%, enabling highly efficient screening for the rare property of superconductivity. Integrated into a multi-stage, AI-accelerated discovery pipeline that incorporates elemental-substitution strategies and machine-learned interatomic potentials, our workflow reduced over 1.3 million candidate structures to 741 dynamically and thermodynamically stable compounds with DFT-confirmed Tc > 5 K. We report the successful synthesis and experimental confirmation of superconductivity in two of these previously unreported compounds. This study establishes a data-driven framework that integrates machine learning, quantum calculations, and experiments to systematically accelerate superconductor discovery.

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Publication Details

Journal
npj Computational Materials
Published
2026-01-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41524-026-01964-8
Primary Topic
Machine Learning in Materials Science
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Developing a complete AI-accelerated workflow for superconductor discovery

P. J. Hirschfeld, J. J. Hamlin, Z. Li, Richard G. Hennig et al.
npj Computational Materials
Machine Learning in Materials Science
article

Developing a complete AI-accelerated workflow for superconductor discovery

P. J. Hirschfeld, J. J. Hamlin, Z. Li, Richard G. Hennig, G. R. Stewart, Benjamin Geisler, Ajinkya C. Hire, Jason Gibson, Philip M. Dee, Jung Soo Kim, Pawan Prakash
article en

Abstract

The quest to identify new superconducting materials with enhanced properties is hindered by the prohibitive cost of computing electron-phonon spectral functions, severely limiting the materials space that can be explored. Here, we introduce a Bootstrapped Ensemble of Equivariant Graph Neural Networks (BEE-NET), a machine-learning model trained to predict the Eliashberg spectral function and superconducting critical temperature with a mean-absolute-error of 0.87 K relative to DFT-based Allen-Dynes calculations. Intriguingly, BEE-NET achieves a true-negative-rate of 99.4%, enabling highly efficient screening for the rare property of superconductivity. Integrated into a multi-stage, AI-accelerated discovery pipeline that incorporates elemental-substitution strategies and machine-learned interatomic potentials, our workflow reduced over 1.3 million candidate structures to 741 dynamically and thermodynamically stable compounds with DFT-confirmed Tc > 5 K. We report the successful synthesis and experimental confirmation of superconductivity in two of these previously unreported compounds. This study establishes a data-driven framework that integrates machine learning, quantum calculations, and experiments to systematically accelerate superconductor discovery.

npj Computational MaterialsVol. 12(1)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US), University of Florida (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 100%
Machine Learning in Materials Science
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Developing a complete AI-accelerated workflow for superconductor discovery — P. J. Hirschfeld, J. J. Hamlin, et al. · npj Computational Materials (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS