Autonomous mobile robots for exploratory synthetic chemistry

Abstract Autonomous laboratories can accelerate discoveries in chemical synthesis, but this requires automated measurements coupled with reliable decision-making 1,2 . Most autonomous laboratories involve bespoke automated equipment 3–6 , and reaction outcomes are often assessed using a single, hard-wired characterization technique 7 . Any decision-making algorithms 8 must then operate using this narrow range of characterization data 9,10 . By contrast, manual experiments tend to draw on a wider range of instruments to characterize reaction products, and decisions are rarely taken based on one measurement alone. Here we show that a synthesis laboratory can be integrated into an autonomous laboratory by using…

• LT
  Leverhulme Trust

  Award: 856405
• EC
  European Commission

  Award: 856405
• EA
  Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

  Awards: EP/ N004884/1, EP/T031263/1, EP/V026887/1, EP/T031263/1, EP/ N004884