Exploring quantum active learning for materials design and discovery

Abstract

The meeting of artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing is already a reality; quantum machine learning (QML) promises the design of better regression models. In this work, we extend our previous studies of materials discovery using classical active learning (AL), which showed remarkable economy of data, to explore the use of quantum algorithms within the AL framework (QAL) as implemented in the MLChem4D and QMLMaterial codes. The proposed QAL uses quantum support vector regressor (QSVR) or a quantum Gaussian process regressor (QGPR) with various quantum kernels and different feature maps. Data sets include perovskite properties (piezoelectric coefficient, band gap, energy storage) and the structure optimization – by density functional theory – of a doped nanoparticle (3Al@Si₁₁) chosen to compare with classical AL results. Our results revealed that the QAL method improved the searches in most cases, but not all, seemingly correlated with the “roughness” of the data. QAL has the potential of finding optimum solutions, within chemical space, in materials science and elsewhere in chemistry. Finally, we have termed the integration of quantum chemistry with QML the “QQ method”: Quantum for building the potential energy surface and Quantum for new inferences and discoveries with small data using quantum algorithms.