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Finding a needle in a haystack is the quintessentially impossible task. But what if new tools could make it straightforwardly achievable? Imagine if, instead of searching through everything by hand, you could portion out small piles of hay and use magnets.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can act as a magnet for scientific solutions, pulling important information from a mountain of possibilities.

But AI can only do so much. If the proverbial haystack is too big, even the most powerful system can be stymied. Effectively using AI requires intelligently involving domain science expertise in the process. A team of scientists brought AI, high-throughput experimentation, and materials science knowledge together to speed up the discovery process.

The combination worked. The team, led by researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Argonne National Laboratory, identified combinations of solvents that can dissolve three times more of a compound proposed as part of an energy-efficient redox flow battery.

They succeeded by quickly narrowing their search to less than 10% of possible combinations. The findings are published in Nature Communications.

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