Towards Predictive Synthesis of Inorganic Materials Using Network Science

Accelerating materials discovery is the cornerstone of modern technological competitiveness. Yet, the inorganic synthesis of new compounds is often an important bottleneck in this quest. Well-established quantum chemistry and experimental synthesis methods combined with consolidated network science approaches might provide revolutionary knowledge to tackle this challenge. Recent pioneering studies in this direction have shown that the topological analysis of material networks hold great potential to effectively explore the synthesizability of inorganic compounds. In this Perspective we discuss the most exciting work in this area, in particular emerging new physicochemical insights and general concepts on how network science can significantly help reduce the timescales required to discover new materials and find synthetic routes for their fabrication. We also provide a perspective on outstanding problems, challenges and open questions.