Obtain star materials

[Stephen_liao]

I want to know if starred materials are more valuable and how to get them in mp-api.

[tschaume]

Starred materials have been experimentally observed. In the API, we tag materials as theoretical if the material does not match to an experimental structure from the ICSD. So theoretical=False in mpr.summary.search() would return the experimentally observed materials. Also see this thread for more details:

How is the 'theoretical' tag determined?

Hi, I found that a new tag ‘theoretical’ is given for all entries to tell if the structure originated from an experimental work, or if the structure is purely theoretical. How is this tag determined? For example, if an ICSD experimental entry has partial occupancies and MP entry does not due to ordering, would this MP entry get True or False? When comparing the MP structure to ICSD entries, is it done by using the structure matcher of pymatgen or just the composition is compared? I am curious…