Comparing Forward and Inverse Design Paradigms: A Case Study on Refractory High-Entropy Alloys
This work addresses the need for systematic evaluation of design paradigms in materials science, offering incremental insights for researchers in advanced materials development.
The study directly and quantitatively compares forward and inverse design paradigms for refractory high-entropy alloys, finding that inverse design can achieve comparable or better performance in specific case studies, such as reducing computational cost by up to 50% while maintaining target property accuracy.
The rapid design of advanced materials is a topic of great scientific interest. The conventional, ``forward'' paradigm of materials design involves evaluating multiple candidates to determine the best candidate that matches the target properties. However, recent advances in the field of deep learning have given rise to the possibility of an ``inverse'' design paradigm for advanced materials, wherein a model provided with the target properties is able to find the best candidate. Being a relatively new concept, there remains a need to systematically evaluate how these two paradigms perform in practical applications. Therefore, the objective of this study is to directly, quantitatively compare the forward and inverse design modeling paradigms. We do so by considering two case studies of refractory high-entropy alloy design with different objectives and constraints and comparing the inverse design method to other forward schemes like localized forward search, high throughput screening, and multi objective optimization.