An Autonomous Chemistry Lab for Accelerated Materials Discovery and Innovation

Currently, both the rate and output of traditional materials synthesis and discovery are too slow and too small to efficiently provide needed advances. This project will establish an autonomous chemistry lab (ACL) that can operate 24/7 with high precision to greatly accelerate materials discovery and innovation.  It relies on the design of a lab utilizing robotic and autonomous tools for the manipulation of lab equipment and characterization tools within the lab space. A robotic platform with three major components will be used:  a mobile base, a robotic arm, software/characterization tools including integration/feedback with AI. To mimic the functionality of a human chemist, each robot action will be designed and tested, and the lab equipment modified to be compatible with the robot. First applications will focus on the organic synthesis and solid-state synthesis of CO₂ conversion catalysts.