> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.consensus.app/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Compare candidate materials against published test data

> Search published performance data for each candidate under your actual operating conditions, and find out which combinations nobody has tested.

## What you get

A comparison matrix of candidates against the conditions you care about. Every populated cell cites a paper and the conditions the value was measured under. Every empty cell is a gap — and those are where your test budget should go.

## Who it's for

Materials, process, and reliability engineers choosing between options with incomplete internal data. Semiconductor, automotive, aerospace, and consumer-product R\&D groups.

## The move that makes this work

Express the requirement as **conditions**, not as a material name. The spec becomes the query: temperature range, cycle count, atmosphere, dimension, contaminant, load. Then hold those conditions constant across every candidate so the results are comparable.

A search for a material name returns everything ever written about it. A search for the material under your conditions returns the handful of papers that answer your question.

## How it works

<Steps>
  <Step title="Turn the spec into physical conditions">
    Write the operating envelope out explicitly before searching. This is the step that determines whether the output is usable.
  </Step>

  <Step title="One fan-out per candidate, conditions held constant">
    Run a query set per material or process, varying only the candidate. Anything else and you are comparing searches, not materials.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set the domain, or drown">
    Without `domain=mat,eng,phys,chem`, technical vocabulary pulls in unrelated biomedical literature. This single parameter is the difference between a usable and an unusable result set.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Extract values with their conditions attached">
    Use `include_full_text_chunks=true`. A performance number without its test conditions is not comparable to another number, and conditions live in methods sections rather than abstracts.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Report the gaps as loudly as the data">
    Say plainly which candidate-condition combinations have no published data. That is the most actionable output of the whole exercise.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## The API call

```bash theme={null}
curl -G "https://api.consensus.app/v1/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $CONSENSUS_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "query=copper hybrid bonding void formation thermal cycling reliability" \
  --data-urlencode "domain=mat,eng,phys" \
  --data-urlencode "include_full_text_chunks=true" \
  --data-urlencode "page_size=50"
```

<Note>
  Full-text excerpts require a paid plan or an Enterprise API key and currently cover open-access papers. Engineering and materials literature skews toward closed-access conference proceedings, so expect coverage here to be patchier than in biomedicine — check before treating the matrix as complete.
</Note>

Useful `domain` codes for this work: `mat` (materials), `eng` (engineering), `phys` (physics), `chem` (chemistry), `env` (environmental).

## What to check before you trust it

* **Verify conditions on every extracted value.** A modulus measured at room temperature says nothing about behaviour at 200°C, and the two look identical in a table.
* **Watch for standards mismatch.** Values measured under different test standards are not comparable even when units match.
* **Empty cells may be a terminology problem.** Before reporting a gap, re-run with the alternative names the field uses for the same material or process.
* **Published performance is best-case.** Laboratory conditions and production conditions differ; treat literature values as an upper bound to validate, not a spec to adopt.

## Related

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Find published process conditions for a manufacturing step" icon="sliders" href="/use-cases/process-window-precedent">
    Once you have chosen the material, find the conditions to run it at.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Extract numbers and formulas from full-text papers" icon="table-cells" href="/use-cases/extract-values-from-full-text">
    The extraction discipline this depends on.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Best practices" icon="shapes" href="/use-cases/best-practices">
    Excerpt-first extraction and the rest of the primitives.
  </Card>

  <Card title="All use cases" icon="grid-2" href="/use-cases">
    Browse the gallery by persona.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>