ChemVLM: Exploring the Power of Multimodal Large Language Models in Chemistry Area
Junxian Li, Di Zhang, Xunzhi Wang, Zeying Hao, Jingdi Lei, Qian Tan, Cai Zhou, Wei Liu
Abstract
Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success and have been applied across various scientific fields, including chemistry. However, many chemical tasks require the processing of visual information, which cannot be successfully handled by existing chemical LLMs. This brings a growing need for models capable of integrating multimodal information in the chemical domain. In this paper, we introduce ChemVLM, an open-source chemical multimodal large language model specifically designed for chemical applications. ChemVLM is trained on a carefully curated bilingual multimodal dataset that enhances its ability to understand both textual and visual chemical information, including molecular structures, reactions, and chemistry examination questions. We develop three datasets for comprehensive evaluation, tailored to Chemical Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Multimodal Chemical Reasoning (MMCR), and Multimodal Molecule Understanding tasks. We benchmark ChemVLM against a range of open-source and proprietary multimodal large language models on various tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that ChemVLM achieves competitive performance across all evaluated tasks.
BibTeX
@article{Li_Zhang_Wang_Hao_Lei_Tan_Zhou_Liu_Yang_Xiong_Wang_Chen_Wang_Li_Su_Zhang_Ouyang_Li_Zhou_2025, title={ChemVLM: Exploring the Power of Multimodal Large Language Models in Chemistry Area}, volume={39}, url={https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/32020}, DOI={10.1609/aaai.v39i1.32020}, abstractNote={Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success and have been applied across various scientific fields, including chemistry. However, many chemical tasks require the processing of visual information, which cannot be successfully handled by existing chemical LLMs. This brings a growing need for models capable of integrating multimodal information in the chemical domain. In this paper, we introduce ChemVLM, an open-source chemical multimodal large language model specifically designed for chemical applications. ChemVLM is trained on a carefully curated bilingual multimodal dataset that enhances its ability to understand both textual and visual chemical information, including molecular structures, reactions, and chemistry examination questions. We develop three datasets for comprehensive evaluation, tailored to Chemical Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Multimodal Chemical Reasoning (MMCR), and Multimodal Molecule Understanding tasks. We benchmark ChemVLM against a range of open-source and proprietary multimodal large language models on various tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that ChemVLM achieves competitive performance across all evaluated tasks.}, number={1}, journal={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence}, author={Li, Junxian and Zhang, Di and Wang, Xunzhi and Hao, Zeying and Lei, Jingdi and Tan, Qian and Zhou, Cai and Liu, Wei and Yang, Yaotian and Xiong, Xinrui and Wang, Weiyun and Chen, Zhe and Wang, Wenhai and Li, Wei and Su, Mao and Zhang, Shufei and Ouyang, Wanli and Li, Yuqiang and Zhou, Dongzhan}, year={2025}, month={Apr.}, pages={415-423} }