Boris Slautin

Boris Slautin, Utkarsh Pratiush, Yu Liu et al.

Autonomous experimentation has transformed microscopy and materials discovery by enabling closed-loop optimization including imaging and spectroscopy tuning, strucutre property relationship discovery, and exploration of combinatorial libraries. However, most current workflows remain limited to selecting measurements within fixed objective or hypothesis spaces, rather than generating new physical models from experimental data. Here, we introduce an open hypothesis-learning framework that combines symbolic regression with large-language-model-based physical evaluation and implement it for autonomous scanning probe microscopy. Symbolic regression generates candidate analytical relationships directly from sparse measurements, while the language-model evaluator ranks these candidates according to physical plausibility, scaling behavior, and consistency with known mechanisms. We demonstrate the approach on autonomous piezoresponse force microscopy measurements of ferroelectric domain switching in a PZT thin film. Starting from five seed measurements, the workflow evolves from physically incomplete candidate expressions toward interpretable voltage-time growth laws consistent with kinetic domain-wall motion. This work extends autonomous microscopy from closed-loop optimization toward open hypothesis discovery, where candidate physical laws emerge from the experiment itself rather than being specified in advance. More broadly, the framework establishes a route for integrating symbolic regression, physical reasoning, and adaptive experimentation into hierarchical autonomous scientific workflows.

Yu Liu, Boris Slautin, Ian Mercer et al.

Automated experimentation is moving from closed-loop optimization toward open decision-making, where human or AI planners must forecast the consequences of candidate actions before executing them. Such forecasts require a model of both sides of the experiment: how the sample is likely to respond and what the instrument is likely to detect. We therefore introduce a coupled digital-twin framework that separates these roles and then links them. In this framework, the sample twin encodes material state inferred from prior knowledge and measurements till the moment. The instrument twin captures signal formation, feedback dynamics, and operating constraints based on prior knowledge. When coupled, the two twins estimate expected outcomes, uncertainty, and risk for candidate microscope operations. For amplitude-modulation scanning probe microscopy, we realize this framework with a physics-informed encoder of force-distance curves, a deterministic scanner model of cantilever and feedback dynamics, and sparse learned residual corrections. The encoder first recovers scanner-driving descriptors with sub-nanometer accuracy. The calibrated scanner then reproduces typical traces within a few nanometers and identifies operating-point noise amplification as the main source of mismatch. Supplementary phase analysis localizes residual error to the phase channel, which clarifies where added physics is needed. Together, these results establish coupled sample and instrument twins as a practical foundation for predictive microscope operation and autonomous experimental planning.