Toward sustainable polymer design: a molecular dynamics-informed machine learning approach for vitrimers

Abstract

Vitrimers represent an emerging class of sustainable polymers with self-healing capabilities enabled by dynamic covalent adaptive networks. However, their limited molecular diversity constrains their property space and potential applications. Recent developments in machine learning (ML) techniques accelerate polymer design by predicting properties and virtually screening candidates, yet the scarcity of available experimental vitrimer data poses challenges in training ML models. To address this, we leverage molecular dynamics (MD) data generated by our previous work to train and benchmark seven ML models covering six feature representations for glass transition temperature (Tg) prediction. By averaging predicted Tg from different models, the model ensemble approach outperforms individual models, allowing for accurate and efficient property prediction on unlabeled datasets. Two novel vitrimers are identified and synthesized, exhibiting experimentally validated higher Tg than existing bifunctional transesterification vitrimers, along with demonstrated healability. This work explores the possibility of using MD data to train ML models in the absence of sufficient experimental data, enabling the discovery of novel, synthesizable polymer chemistries with a wide range of desirable properties. The integrated MD–ML approach offers polymer chemists an efficient tool for accurate property prediction and designing polymers tailored to diverse applications.