Towards Fully-Automated Materials Discovery via Large-Scale Synthesis Dataset and Expert-Level LLM-as-a-Judge

Abstract: Materials synthesis is vital for innovations such as energy storage, catalysis, electronics, and biomedical devices. Yet, the process relies heavily on empirical, trial-and-error methods guided by expert intuition. Our work aims to support the materials science community by providing a practical, data-driven resource. We have curated a comprehensive dataset of 17K expert-verified synthesis recipes from open-access literature, which forms the basis of our newly developed benchmark, AlchemyBench. AlchemyBench offers an end-to-end framework that supports research in LLMs applied to synthesis prediction. It encompasses key tasks, including raw materials and equipment prediction, synthesis procedure generation, and characterization outcome forecasting. We propose an LLM-as-a-Judge framework that leverages LLMs for automated evaluation, demonstrating strong statistical agreement with expert assessments. Overall, our contributions offer a supportive foundation for exploring the capabilities of LLMs in predicting and guiding materials synthesis, ultimately paving the way for more efficient experimental design and accelerated innovation in materials science.