Development of a robotic system for automatic organic chemistry synthesis
This addresses the need for flexible, low-modification automation in organic chemistry labs, though it is incremental as it builds on existing robotic methods.
The researchers tackled the inflexibility of existing automated chemical synthesis systems by developing a robot arm that mimics human chemist motions, achieving a 34% yield in a Michael reaction comparable to a junior chemist's performance.
Automated chemical synthesis carries great promises of safety, efficiency and reproducibility for both research and industry laboratories. Current approaches are based on specifically-designed automation systems, which present two major drawbacks: (i) existing apparatus must be modified to be integrated into the automation systems; (ii) such systems are not flexible and would require substantial re-design to handle new reactions or procedures. In this paper, we propose a system based on a robot arm which, by mimicking the motions of human chemists, is able to perform complex chemical reactions without any modifications to the existing setup used by humans. The system is capable of precise liquid handling, mixing, filtering, and is flexible: new skills and procedures could be added with minimum effort. We show that the robot is able to perform a Michael reaction, reaching a yield of 34%, which is comparable to that obtained by a junior chemist (undergraduate student in Chemistry).