# Retrieval Augmented Generation of Literature-derived Polymer Knowledge: The Example of a Biodegradable Polymer Expert System

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.16650 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16650/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical and biomedical RAG, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 11 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Feb 2026.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Medical and biomedical RAG](https://mlsanity.com/rag/medical-and-biomedical-rag/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [A Survey on RAG Meeting LLMs: Towards Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06211/) (2024)
- [Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08921/) (2024)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Hallucination Mitigation Techniques in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01313/) (2024)
- [Factuality Challenges in the Era of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05189/) (2023)
- [Reducing hallucination in structured outputs via Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08189/) (2024)
- [Schema-Driven Information Extraction from Heterogeneous Tables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14336/) (2023)
- [A general-purpose material property data extraction pipeline from large polymer corpora using Natural Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13136/) (2022)
- [PolyIE: A Dataset of Information Extraction from Polymer Material Scientific Literature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07715/) (2023)
- [Benchmarking Large Language Models for Polymer Property Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02129/) (2025)
- [Benchmarking Vector, Graph and Hybrid Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) Pipelines for Open Radio Access Networks (ORAN)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03608/) (2025)
- [Multi-stage Prompt Refinement for Mitigating Hallucinations in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12032/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Polymer literature contains a large and growing body of experimental knowledge, yet much of it is buried in unstructured text and inconsistent terminology, making systematic retrieval and reasoning difficult. Existing tools typically extract narrow, study-specific facts in isolation, failing to preserve the cross-study context required to answer broader scientific questions. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) offers a promising way to overcome this limitation by combining large language models (LLMs) with external retrieval, but its effectiveness depends strongly on how domain knowledge is represented. In this work, we develop two retrieval pipelines: a dense semantic vector-based approach (VectorRAG) and a graph-based approach (GraphRAG). Using over 1,000 polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) papers, we construct context-preserving paragraph embeddings and a canonicalized structured knowledge graph supporting entity disambiguation and multi-hop reasoning. We evaluate these pipelines through standard retrieval metrics, comparisons with general state-of-the-art systems such as GPT and Gemini, and qualitative validation by a domain chemist. The results show that GraphRAG achieves higher precision and interpretability, while VectorRAG provides broader recall, highlighting complementary trade-offs. Expert validation further confirms that the tailored pipelines, particularly GraphRAG, produce well-grounded, citation-reliable responses with strong domain relevance. By grounding every statement in evidence, these systems enable researchers to navigate the literature, compare findings across studies, and uncover patterns that are difficult to extract manually. More broadly, this work establishes a practical framework for building materials science assistants using curated corpora and retrieval design, reducing reliance on proprietary models while enabling trustworthy literature analysis at scale.