Integration of Scanning Probe Microscope with High-Performance Computing: fixed-policy and reward-driven workflows implementation
This work addresses the problem of automating scientific experiments for researchers using scanning probe microscopes, representing an incremental infrastructure development.
The researchers tackled the challenge of automating scientific discovery with scanning probe microscopes by developing a Python interface library for SPM control from local or remote high-performance computers and introducing a platform for fixed-policy or reward-driven workflows. Their work provides a full infrastructure for automated SPM workflows, enabling both routine operations and autonomous scientific discovery with machine learning.
The rapid development of computation power and machine learning algorithms has paved the way for automating scientific discovery with a scanning probe microscope (SPM). The key elements towards operationalization of automated SPM are the interface to enable SPM control from Python codes, availability of high computing power, and development of workflows for scientific discovery. Here we build a Python interface library that enables controlling an SPM from either a local computer or a remote high-performance computer (HPC), which satisfies the high computation power need of machine learning algorithms in autonomous workflows. We further introduce a general platform to abstract the operations of SPM in scientific discovery into fixed-policy or reward-driven workflows. Our work provides a full infrastructure to build automated SPM workflows for both routine operations and autonomous scientific discovery with machine learning.