Advancing Material Stability Prediction: Leveraging Machine Learning and High-Dimensional Data for Improved Accuracy

Abstract

Predicting the material stability is essential for accelerating the discovery of advanced materials in renewable energy, aerospace, and catalysis. Traditional approaches, such as Density Functional Theory (DFT), are accurate but computationally expensive and unsuitable for high-throughput screening. This study introduces a machine learning (ML) framework trained on high-dimensional data from the Open Quantum Materials Database (OQMD) to predict formation energy, a key stability metric. Among the evaluated models, deep learning outperformed Gradient Boosting Machines and Random Forest, achieving up to 0.88 R 2 prediction accuracy. Feature importance analysis identified thermodynamic, electronic, and structural properties as the primary drivers of stability, offering interpretable insights into material behavior. Compared to DFT, the proposed ML framework significantly reduces computational costs, enabling the rapid screening of thousands of compounds. These results highlight ML’s transformative potential in materials discovery, with direct applications in energy storage, semiconductors, and catalysis.