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From Word2Vec to Transformers: Text-Derived Composition Embeddings for Filtering Combinatorial Electrocatalysts

arXiv cs.CL / 3/11/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper presents a label-free screening method using text-derived embeddings to represent compositions of complex electrocatalysts for efficient candidate filtering.
  • Two embedding approaches are compared: a Word2Vec baseline trained on scientific texts and transformer-based embeddings using either linear element-wise mixing or composition prompts.
  • Candidate electrocatalysts are prioritized by similarity to property concepts like conductivity and dielectric, mapping compositions into a 2D descriptor space for Pareto-front filtering without electrochemical labels.
  • The lightweight Word2Vec baseline frequently achieves superior reduction of candidate compositions while maintaining performance close to experimentally measured results across 15 diverse materials libraries.
  • This approach enables efficient exploration of vast compositional spaces in materials science by leveraging natural language-derived embeddings rather than costly measurements or labels.

Condensed Matter > Materials Science

arXiv:2603.08881 (cond-mat)
[Submitted on 9 Mar 2026]

Title:From Word2Vec to Transformers: Text-Derived Composition Embeddings for Filtering Combinatorial Electrocatalysts

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Abstract:Compositionally complex solid solution electrocatalysts span vast composition spaces, and even one materials system can contain more candidate compositions than can be measured exhaustively. Here we evaluate a label-free screening strategy that represents each composition using embeddings derived from scientific texts and prioritizes candidates based on similarity to two property concepts. We compare a corpus-trained Word2Vec baseline with transformer-based embeddings, where compositions are encoded either by linear element-wise mixing or by short composition prompts. Similarities to `concept directions', the terms conductivity and dielectric, define a 2-dimensional descriptor space, and a symmetric Pareto-front selection is used to filter candidate subsets without using electrochemical labels. Performance is assessed on 15 materials libraries including noble metal alloys and multicomponent oxides. In this setting, the lightweight Word2Vec baseline, which uses a simple linear combination of element embeddings, often achieves the highest number of reductions of possible candidate compositions while staying close to the best measured performance.
Comments:
Subjects: Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci); Computation and Language (cs.CL)
Cite as: arXiv:2603.08881 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]
  (or arXiv:2603.08881v1 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.08881
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arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Submission history

From: Markus Stricker [view email]
[v1] Mon, 9 Mar 2026 19:46:23 UTC (57 KB)
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