Development of a deep learning-based group contribution framework for targeted design of ionic liquids

In this article, we present a novel deep learning-based group contribution framework for the targeted design of ionic liquids (ILs). This computational framework can expedite and improve the process of finding desirable molecular structures of IL via accurate property predictions in a data-driven manner. Our proposed framework consists of two essential steps: establishing a correlation between IL viscosity and CO₂ solubility by merging two deep learning models (DNN-GC and ANN-GC) and utilizing this correlation to identify the optimal IL structure with maximal CO₂ absorption capacity. Our model achieves high accuracy with R² values of 95%, 94.2%, and 96.4% for DNN-GC, ANN-GC, and DNN-ANN-GC, respectively. Correlation results align with the experimental data, affirming the applicability of our framework. Finally, the algorithm is employed in a CO₂ capture case study to generate and select the best-performing novel ILs, which exhibit behavior consistent with established ILs in the literature.