"A mobile robotic chemist"
Abstract
Technologies such as batteries, biomaterials and heterogeneous catalysts have functions that are defined by mixtures of molecular and mesoscale components. As yet, this multi-length-scale complexity cannot be fully captured by atomistic simulations, and the design of such materials from first principles is still rare1-5. Likewise, experimental complexity scales exponentially with the number of variables, restricting most searches to narrow areas of materials space. Robots can assist in experimental searches6-14 but their widespread adoption in materials research is challenging because of the diversity of sample types, operations, instruments and measurements required. Here we use a mobile robot to search for improved photocatalysts for hydrogen production from water15. The robot operated autonomously over eight days, performing 688 experiments within a ten-variable experimental space, driven by a batched Bayesian search algorithm16-18. This autonomous search identified photocatalyst mixtures that were six times more active than the initial formulations, selecting beneficial components and deselecting negative ones. Our strategy uses a dexterous19,20 free-roaming robot21-24, automating the researcher rather than the instruments. This modular approach could be deployed in conventional laboratories for a range of research problems beyond photocatalysis.
Keywords
Automation, Robotics, Science, Empirical ResearchThemes
AutomationLinks to Reference
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2442-2
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32641813
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2442-2
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2442-2
Citation
Share
How to contribute.
