Artificial intelligence for life-cycle-aware sustainable materials discovery

Review article, 2026

Artificial intelligence has accelerated the discovery of new materials, offering a route towards sustainable development. Candidates are nevertheless evaluated almost exclusively on functional performance. Whether a material can be manufactured at scale, how it behaves once built into a real product, what burden its production places on the environment and what becomes of it at the end of its life are questions addressed only after the choice has been settled, when little can be altered. Bringing these considerations into the discovery process itself is achievable and would yield materials that are sustainable not by accident but by design.