Making materials science resources discoverable 

and accessible with the NIST Materials Resource 

Registry

Chandler A Becker1, Raymond L Plante1, Alden Dima1, Laura M Bartolo2, Sharief Youssef1, 

Andrea Medina-Smith1, Zachary T Trautt1, Emily K Brown3, Benjamin Long1, Robert J. 

Hanisch1, Mary C. Brady1, James A. Warren1

1 National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg MD

2 Center for Hierarchical Materials Design, Northwestern University, Evanston IL

3 Centre College, Danville KY

TMS Annual Meeting

March 15, 2018

Phoenix, AZ
Goals for Materials Resource Registry

Materials data is proliferating, and finding/using it can be time-consuming

Help users find data-related resources to improve design, research and collaboration by:

§ Defining and building consensus around minimum required metadata for materials science 

data discovery

§ Deploying metadata schema using a pilot registry infrastructure developed by NIST

§ Validating with materials science data collections at organizations participating in the 

Working Group

§ Support development of an ecosystem around making data and metadata available and 

machine-actionable

§ From multiple sources (MDF, Materials Commons, nanoHub, researcher repositories, etc.)

§ Where each institution can control how they distribute the data
Exchange metadata by

harvesting records

maintained by 

different institutions

Making it easier to find

and share resources

about materials science
Materials Resource Registry Application

4

See detailed metadata

Visit resource’s home page

Read full description

Search both structured 

and free text fields

Running instances

Two instances running to date, collectively containing 360+ records, searchable from either interface:

§ NIST Materials Resource Registry

• https://materials.registry.nist.gov

• NIST records plus a number of records related to the U.S. Materials Genome Initiative (MGI)

§ Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD) Materials Resource Registry

• https://mrr.materialsdatafacility.org 

• Records associated with CHiMaD efforts, including Midwest Data Spoke

§ Records represent many institutions and types of resources

Working with several other institutions to exchange records from existing infrastructures

Do I have to give you my data? No.
Metadata – Key to Federating

Federate registries by exchanging resource description records

A common description schema makes this possible

This project has adopted an XML-based approach

§ OAI-PMH for searching and exchanging records

• Supports distributed search and future releases will have increased support for access control

§ XML Schema for defining record format/syntax

Building extensible metadata

§ Defining concepts, vocabularies in format-free way

§ Encode into XML using techniques that allow for future extension and evolution

Developed high-level MSE vocabulary to support searching across systems; working through 

Research Data Alliance with other international efforts
Concept Categories

Data origin

Material types

Structural features

Properties addressed

Characterization methods (covering experimental methods/techniques)

Computational methods

Synthesis and processing
Properties addressed

Tier 1

chemical

colligative

corrosion

crystallographic

durability

electrical

kinetic

magnetic

mechanical

optical

rheological

structural

thermodynamic

toxicity

transport

Tier 2

chemical:

composition

functional ligands

impurity concentration

molecular weights

corrosion:

crevice

erosion-corrosion

galvanic

high temperature

intergranular

pitting

selective leaching

stress corrosion

uniform

crystallographic:

crystalline lattice

orientation maps

space groups

textures

durability:

aging

coefficient of friction

thermal shock resistance

water absorption

wear resistance

electrical:

band structure

conductivity

current and energy density

dielectric constant and spectra

dielectric dispersion

electrostrictive

piezoelectric

power conversion efficiency

pyroelectric

resistivity

spin polarization

superconductivity

thermoelectric kinetic:

grain growth

phase evolution

phase transitions and ordering
Supporting software descriptions

Resulting from merging in another NIST registry effort: MGI Code Catalog

§ A registry of materials science and engineering related software 

§ Funded under the US Materials Genome Initiative

§ Needed to merge metadata schemas used

Some metadata additions are generic (not specific to materials)

§ e.g. code language, supported OS, license, etc.

Compute scale – physical scale a computation models/simulates

electronic scale, nanoscale (atomic), microscale, mesoscale, structural scale, multiscale
Types of resources (NIST instance)
Categories represented in the NIST instance (Number of records)
Summary

Basic functionality in place for registering resources, harvesting between instances, and searching

The newest version of the schema, supporting software, and vocabulary are available

Currently populating the MRR with records and continuing to test the components and system

Examining ways to populate records more easily and consistently

Working with other institutions to link into their existing infrastructures

https://materials.registry.nist.gov

Interested in running an instance or advertising your resource? 

§ We can help.