Revealing the Evolution of Order in Materials Microstructures Using Multi-Modal Computer Vision
This work addresses the problem of scaling and improving reproducibility in materials science analysis for researchers in microelectronics and energy storage, but it is incremental as it builds on existing classification methods.
The paper tackles the challenge of analyzing microstructural order in materials, which is crucial for high-performance applications, by developing a multi-modal machine learning approach for electron microscopy data on La1-xSrxFeO3, showing distinct performance differences between uni- and multi-modal models.
The development of high-performance materials for microelectronics, energy storage, and extreme environments depends on our ability to describe and direct property-defining microstructural order. Our present understanding is typically derived from laborious manual analysis of imaging and spectroscopy data, which is difficult to scale, challenging to reproduce, and lacks the ability to reveal latent associations needed for mechanistic models. Here, we demonstrate a multi-modal machine learning (ML) approach to describe order from electron microscopy analysis of the complex oxide La$_{1-x}$Sr$_x$FeO$_3$. We construct a hybrid pipeline based on fully and semi-supervised classification, allowing us to evaluate both the characteristics of each data modality and the value each modality adds to the ensemble. We observe distinct differences in the performance of uni- and multi-modal models, from which we draw general lessons in describing crystal order using computer vision.