A global alliance of six automated laboratories is on a quest to find new laser materials. These materials, from synthesis to testing, are all conducted under the supervision of artificial intelligence (AI).
Recently, researchers published an article in Science reporting on a compound synthesized in the aforementioned work that can emit lasers with record efficiency. This achievement, along with other recent accomplishments of the alliance, indicates that in certain fields, automated laboratories can surpass even the most accomplished scientists in discovering overlooked findings.
Chemical engineer Milad Abolhasani from North Carolina State University, who was not involved in the study, has also developed an automated laboratory. According to him, these automated labs are moving beyond the concept validation demonstration stage, "they have begun to push the boundaries of science to a higher level."
The process of creating new molecules and materials is typically slow and tedious. Researchers not only have to explore numerous "recipes" for manufacturing molecules but also investigate different reaction conditions. They must test compounds at each step and evaluate plans for scaling up production and assembling materials into devices.
Over the past decade, laboratories have utilized robots to automate many repetitive steps. For instance, in 2015, chemist Martin Burke from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign introduced an automated system for synthesizing small molecules. Later, by incorporating AI, researchers added feedback loops, allowing characterization data of new compounds to guide the next synthesis steps. Discovering new materials and assembling them into devices requires robots to collaborate in more steps, which is challenging to achieve within a single laboratory.
Therefore, Burke and theoretical chemist Alán Aspuru Guzik from the University of Toronto decided to integrate the different functionalities of various labs. "We wanted to create an automated laboratory composed of multiple automated labs," said Aspuru Guzik.
Burke and Aspuru Guzik, along with labs from the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, the University of Glasgow in the UK, the University of British Columbia in Canada, and Kyushu University in Japan, focused on a specific goal: discovering organic compounds capable of emitting high-purity lasers. These materials can be made into thin, flexible luminescent films to power advanced displays and telecommunication devices.
During the research process, labs at the University of Glasgow and the University of British Columbia produced many sugar-cube-sized material blocks. These were sent to Burke and Aspuru Guzik's research group, where robots wove them into candidate emitters in different combinations. Subsequently, these candidate emitters were sent to the University of British Columbia's lab to characterize their luminescent properties in solution and identify the best-performing emitter for large-scale synthesis and purification. These materials, in batches of several grams, were then shipped to Kyushu University's lab to be incorporated into working lasers for performance testing.
The entire operation was supervised by a cloud-based AI platform. This platform learns from each experiment and incorporates feedback data into subsequent iterations. The main bottleneck in this process lies in logistics and transportation, as compounds need to be timely transported to labs worldwide.
In the end, the collaboration proved successful. The research yielded 621 new compounds, with 21 capable of rivaling state-of-the-art laser emitters, and one even more effectively emitting blue lasers than any other organic material.
Chemical engineer Donna Blackmond from the Scripps Research Institute in the US remarked that the speed of discovering new compounds was "very fast," and Burke's team's approach could find excellent candidate emitters faster than usual.
For more information on the related paper: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adk9227
