arXiv subjects

Peter A. Beaucage

Publications and source records attributed to Peter A. Beaucage.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

AI-guided high-throughput discovery of iridium- and ruthenium-free palladium-oxide catalysts for durable acidic oxygen evolution

Catalyzing acidic oxygen evolution at the proton-exchange-membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) anode relies almost entirely on iridium or ruthenium, drawn from concentrated supply chains that constrain gigawatt-scale deployment. We report an artificial intelligence (AI)-guided, human-supervised closed-loop platform (>90% automation) integrating combinatorial sputter synthesis, high-throughput screening, machine-learning composition-property models, adaptive multi-objective optimization, and context-aware large-language-model reasoning, where lead catalysts advanced to long-term validation in 1 M H2SO4 at 10 mA cm-2. Navigating a combinatorial metal oxide space, the platform iteratively evaluated the activity-stability trade-off of 2,942 catalysts across 53 material systems and 26 elements, surfacing Ir- and Ru-free complex oxides such as InMnPdOx and NiTaPdOx that conventional design logic, and off-the-shelf language models, would not predict. In retrospective benchmarking, our sequential learning agent advanced the activity-stability frontier faster than fixed-policy Bayesian optimization or in-context language-model selection. During long-term testing, NiTaPdOx operated at lower overpotential than PdOx, but both eventually exceeded 0.5 V: PdOx at ~200 h and NiTaPdOx at ~470 h. InMnPdOx showed a similar overpotential improvement in addition to a dramatic increase in operational stability, retaining overpotential below 0.5 V over 1,000 h of operation. The additive elements promote the formation of a nanostructure that is associated with catalytic activity while stabilizing Pd against corrosion. The results highlight the power of AI-driven science in addressing long-standing challenges in materials chemistry, and the greater availability of Pd relative to incumbent Ir and Ru offers a near-term option to ease supply constraints on scaled electrochemical H2 generation.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

AutoSAS: a new human-aside-the-loop paradigm for automated SAS fitting for high throughput and autonomous experimentation

The advancement of artificial-intelligence driven autonomous experiments demands physics-based modeling and decision-making processes, not only to improve the accuracy of the experimental trajectory but also to increase trust by allowing transparent human-machine collaboration. High-quality structural characterization techniques (e.g., X-ray, neutron, or static light scattering) are a particularly relevant example of this need: they provide invaluable information but are challenging to analyze without expert oversight. Here, we introduce AutoSAS, a novel framework for human-aside-the-loop automated data classification. AutoSAS leverages human-defined candidate models, high-throughput combinatorial fitting, and information-theoretic model selection to generate both classification results and quantitative structural descriptors. We implement AutoSAS in an open-source package designed for use with the Autonomous Formulation Laboratory (AFL) for X-ray and neutron scattering-based optimization of multicomponent liquid formulations. In a first application, we leveraged a set of expert defined candidate models to classify, refine the structure, and track transformations in a model injectable drug carrier system. We evaluated four model selection methods and benchmarked them against an optimized machine learning classifier and the best approach was one that balanced quality of the fit and complexity of the model. AutoSAS not only corroborated the critical micelle concentration boundary identified in previous experiments but also discovered a second structural transition boundary not identified by the previous methods. These results demonstrate the potential of AutoSAS to enhance autonomous experimental workflows by providing robust, interpretable model selection, paving the way for more reliable and insightful structural characterization in complex formulations.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Autonomous Small-Angle Scattering for Accelerated Soft Material Formulation Optimization

The pace of soft material formulation (re)development and design is rapidly increasing as both consumers and new legislation demand products that do less harm to the environment while maintaining high standards of performance. To meet this need, we have developed the Autonomous Formulation Lab (AFL), a platform that can automatically prepare and measure the microstructure of liquid formulations using small-angle neutron and X-ray scattering and, soon, a variety of other techniques. Here, we describe the design, philosophy, tuning, and validation of our active learning agent that guides the course of AFL experiments. We show how our extensive in silico tuning results in an efficient agent that is robust to both the number of measurements and signal to noise variation. Finally, we experimentally validate our virtually tuned agent by addressing a model formulation problem: replacing a petroleum-derived component with a natural analog. We show that the agent efficiently maps both formulations and how post hoc analysis of the measured data reveals the opportunity for further specialization of the agent. With the tuned and proven active learning agent, our autonomously guided AFL platform will accelerate the pace of discovery of liquid formulations and help speed us towards a greener future.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2024

3D printed mesoporous superconductors with periodic order on three length scales and enhanced properties via block copolymer directed self-assembly

Solution-based soft matter self-assembly (SA) promises unique materials properties from approaches including additive manufacturing/three-dimensional (3D) printing. We report direct ink writing derived, hierarchically porous transition metal nitride superconductors (SCs) and precursor oxides, structure-directed by Pluronics-family block copolymer (BCP) SA and heat treated in various environments. SCs with periodic lattices on three length scales show record nanoconfinement-induced upper critical field enhancements correlated with BCP molar mass, attaining values of 50 T for NbN and 8.1 T for non-optimized TiN samples, the first mapping of a tailorable SC property onto a macromolecular parameter. They reach surface areas above 120 m$^2$/g, the highest reported for compound SCs to date. Embedded printing enables the first BCP directed mesoporous non-self-supporting helical SCs. Results suggest that additive manufacturing may open pathways to mesoporous SCs with not only a variety of macroscopic form factors but enhanced properties from intrinsic, SA-derived mesostructures with substantial academic and technological promise.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2022

CyRSoXS: A GPU-accelerated virtual instrument for Polarized Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering (P-RSoXS)

Polarized Resonant Soft X-ray scattering (P-RSoXS) has emerged as a powerful synchrotron-based tool that combines principles of X-ray scattering and X-ray spectroscopy. P-RSoXS provides unique sensitivity to molecular orientation and chemical heterogeneity in soft materials such as polymers and biomaterials. Quantitative extraction of orientation information from P-RSoXS pattern data is challenging because the scattering processes originate from sample properties that must be represented as energy-dependent three-dimensional tensors with heterogeneities at nanometer to sub-nanometer length scales. We overcome this challenge by developing an open-source virtual instrument that uses GPUs to simulate P-RSoXS patterns from real-space material representations with nanoscale resolution. Our computational framework CyRSoXS (https://github.com/usnistgov/cyrsoxs) is designed to maximize GPU performance. We demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of our approach by validating against an extensive set of test cases, which include both analytical solutions and numerical comparisons, demonstrating a speedup of over three orders relative to the current state-of-the-art simulation software. Such fast simulations open up a variety of applications that were previously computationally infeasible, including (a) pattern fitting, (b) co-simulation with the physical instrument for operando analytics, data exploration, and decision support, (c) data creation and integration into machine learning workflows, and (d) utilization in multi-modal data assimilation approaches. Finally, we abstract away the complexity of the computational framework from the end-user by exposing CyRSoXS to Python using Pybind. This eliminates I/O requirements for large-scale parameter exploration and inverse design, and democratizes usage by enabling seamless integration with a Python ecosystem (https://github.com/usnistgov/nrss).

physics.comp-ph↗