The Combinatorial Approach to Materials Discovery

In this artide, we review the new field of combinatorial materials science. We describe in detail our particular materials exploration approach that we call the continuous compositional spread (CCS) approach. This CCS approach allows the synthesis and characterization of a major fraction of a ternary or pseudo-ternary phase spread in about 24 hours. We compare the CCS approach with other schemes for rapid materials investigations. We also provide an example of the successful application of the CCS approach in the discovery of a new high dielectric constant thin-film material, an amorphous zirconium tin titanate, aZTT. New combinatorial approaches to materials research can allow us to do studies that would not have been possible using conventional techniques. 

---

Schneemeyer, L. E, and R. B. van Dover. The Combinatorial Approach to Materials Discovery. In Chemistry for the 21st Century, 151-74. Edited by Ehud Keinan and Israel Schechter. Weinheim Wiley-VCH, 2001. This brief review introduces the principles and limitations to the application of combinatorial chemistry to the study of new materials. 

Other scientists besides biomedical researchers have employed combinatorial chemistry. In 1995, X.-D. Xiang and Peter G. Schultz, then at the University of California, Berkeley, and their colleagues published a paper in Science describing a pioneering application of this technique in materials research. As described in A Combinatorial Approach to Materials Discovery, Schultz and his colleagues performed parallel synthesis—a lot of reactions at the same time—to make an ar-... 

Xiang, X.-D., Xiaodong Sun, Gabriel Briceno. Yulin Lou, Kai-An Wang, Hauyee Chang, William G. Wallace-Freedman, et al. A Combinatorial Approach to Materials Discovery. Science 268 (June 23, 1995) 1,738-1,740. The researchers performed parallel synthesis to make an array of different combinations of elements such as bismuth, strontium, barium, yttrium, oxygen, and others. 

Much has been made of combinatorial approaches to materials discovery however, there are many barriers to the introduction of these methods to SOFC materials, not least their suitability to synthesize libraries of complex multicomponent oxides, such as the cathode materials Lai xSrxCoi yFey03 s [45], In addition to these limitations, there is the... 

Combinatorial chemistry is the production of libraries of compounds that represent permutations of a set of chemical or physical variables. In recent years, combinatorial chemistry has attracted considerable attention in materials science.11131 Originating from the discovery of new chugs by pharmaceutical companies, combinatorial methods have been employed in the areas of organic, biochemical, and inorganic chemistry, etc. In recent years, the combinatorial approach has been successfully applied to the hydro-thermal synthesis of zeolites and related materials.11141... 

Industry essentially seeks to use the combinatorial approach in order to accelerate the discovery of new materials and reduce time-to-market, and this is generally well accepted. The role of academia, however, remains a matter of debate. Some of the most frequently asked questions are ... 

---