Ensemble Machine Learning for the Prediction and Understanding of the Refractive Index in Chalcogenide Glasses

Chalcogenide glasses (ChGs) are a class of amorphous materials presenting remarkable mechanical, optical, and electrical properties, making them promising candidates for advanced photonic and optoelectronic applications. With the increasing integration of artificial intelligence in modern materials design, we are able to systematically select, prepare, and optimize appropriate compositions for desired applications in a manner that was unachievable before. This study employs various machine learning models to reliably predict the refractive index at 20 °C using a small dataset of 541 samples extracted from the SciGlass database. The input for the algorithms consists of a selected set of physico-chemical features computed for the chemical composition of each entry. Additionally, these algorithms served as inner models for an ensemble logistic regression estimator that achieved a superior R2 value of 0.8985. SHAP feature analysis of the second-best model, CatBoostRegressor (R2 = 0.8920), revealed the importance of elemental density, atomic weight, ground state atomic gap, and fraction of p valence electrons in tuning the value of the refractive index of a chalcogenide compound.