Are diffusion models ready for materials discovery in unexplored chemical space?

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Kim, Sanghyun, Jeon, Gihyeon, Hwang, Seungwoo, Lee, Jiho, Jung, Jisu, Han, Seungwu, Kang, Sungwoo
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Kim, Sanghyun
Jeon, Gihyeon
Hwang, Seungwoo
Lee, Jiho
Jung, Jisu
Han, Seungwu
Kang, Sungwoo
author_facet Kim, Sanghyun
Jeon, Gihyeon
Hwang, Seungwoo
Lee, Jiho
Jung, Jisu
Han, Seungwu
Kang, Sungwoo
contents While diffusion models are attracting increasing attention for the design of novel materials, their ability to generate low-energy structures in unexplored chemical spaces has not been systematically assessed. Here, we evaluate the performance of two diffusion models, MatterGen and DiffCSP, against three databases: a ternary oxide set (constructed by a genetic algorithm), a ternary nitride set (constructed by template informatics), and the GNoME database (constructed by a combination of both). We find that diffusion models generally perform stably in well-sampled chemical spaces (oxides and nitrides), but are less effective in uncommon ones (GNoME), which contains many compositions involving rare-earth elements and unconventional stoichiometry. Finally, we assess their size-extrapolation capability and observe a significant drop in performance when the number of atoms exceeds the trained range. This is attributed to the limitations imposed by periodic boundary conditions, which we refer to as the curse of periodicity. This study paves the way for future developments in materials design by highlighting both the strength and the limitations of diffusion models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_09406
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Are diffusion models ready for materials discovery in unexplored chemical space?
Kim, Sanghyun
Jeon, Gihyeon
Hwang, Seungwoo
Lee, Jiho
Jung, Jisu
Han, Seungwu
Kang, Sungwoo
Materials Science
While diffusion models are attracting increasing attention for the design of novel materials, their ability to generate low-energy structures in unexplored chemical spaces has not been systematically assessed. Here, we evaluate the performance of two diffusion models, MatterGen and DiffCSP, against three databases: a ternary oxide set (constructed by a genetic algorithm), a ternary nitride set (constructed by template informatics), and the GNoME database (constructed by a combination of both). We find that diffusion models generally perform stably in well-sampled chemical spaces (oxides and nitrides), but are less effective in uncommon ones (GNoME), which contains many compositions involving rare-earth elements and unconventional stoichiometry. Finally, we assess their size-extrapolation capability and observe a significant drop in performance when the number of atoms exceeds the trained range. This is attributed to the limitations imposed by periodic boundary conditions, which we refer to as the curse of periodicity. This study paves the way for future developments in materials design by highlighting both the strength and the limitations of diffusion models.
title Are diffusion models ready for materials discovery in unexplored chemical space?
topic Materials Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09406