User:Crom23/Draft of MaterialsProject

The Materials Project is an initiative to accelerate the development of technology by predicting how new materials–both real and hypothetical–can be used. The effort was established in 2011 with an emphasis on battery research, but includes property calculations for many areas of clean energy systems such as photovoltaics, thermoelectric materials, and catalysts. Dr. Kristin Persson directs the initiative, which uses supercomputers at Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory, among other institutions, to run calculations using Density Functional Theory. Commonly computed values include enthalpy of formation, crystal structure, and band gap. The assembled databases of computed structures and properties are freely available to other researchers, and have been used to predict new materials that should be synthesizable, and screen existing materials for useful properties.