Work

Digitizing protocols into single reactors for the one-pot synthesis of nanomaterials

Year: 2023

Type: article

Abstract: Nanomaterials exhibit unique properties that are tunable depending on their morphology and composition. However, widely used methods can fail due to incomplete or assumed knowledge of the synthesis protocol. A digital synthesis method could unambiguously capture the synthesis process, including required hardware, reagent inputs, and process description, thereby increasing accessibility and improving reproducibility. Our method encodes synthetic procedures into single reactors by imprinting synthetic parameters to the reactor's morphology, which are described using a chemical description language, χDL. This approach is consolidated into three single reactors that automate complex processes such as one-time, dropwise, and sequential addition for the synthesis of eight time-resolved CdSe quantum dots, CdSe@ZnSe core-shell nanoparticles, and Pt-Fe 3 O 4 Janus nanoparticles, respectively. This method of translating synthetic parameters into physical instances of a reactor enables the automation of nanomaterial synthesis in a simple, reliable, and reproducible manner, making nanomaterials accessible to researchers from various fields on demand.

Source: Matter

DOI: 10.1016/j.matt.2023.05.029