Understanding structural adaptability: a reactant informatics approach to experiment design

The structural and electronic adaptability ranges of a [VO(SeO3)center dot HSeO3)] framework found in organically templated vanadium selenites were determined using a three step approach, informed by cheminformatics descriptors, involving (i) the extraction of the most important reaction parameters from historical reaction data, (ii) a fractional factorial design on those parameters to better explore chemical space and (iii) decision tree construction on organic molecular properties to determine the factors governing framework formation. This process enabled the elucidation of both the structural and electronic adaptability ranges and provided the context to extract chemical understanding from the structural features that give rise to these respective ranges. This work resulted in the synthesis and structural determination of five new compounds.