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There continues to be
an increase
in demand for the discovery, development and optimization of new
materials. These new materials cover the range from polymers,
adhesives, and pharmaceuticals all the way to catalysts, phosphors and
semiconductors. Through advances championed by the pharmaceutical
industry, there now exists an automation infrastructure base that can
support research in new materials at a basic level. In particular, many
of the automation solutions developed for combinatorial chemistry and
high throughput screening have been adapted to work with the broader
array of reagents and compounds encountered in non-pharmaceutical
applications. The combinatorial approach is ideally used in
applications where interactions between 1 and 2 components are to be
studied (e.g. ternary and quaternary mixtures). In many advanced
materials discovery applications it is not uncommon to conduct
experiments with 5 component mixtures (and greater). To the extent that
these complex combinatorial experiments have been carried out in a
micro-scale, with corresponding small material budgets, screening of
conditions previously unthought-of have proven extremely valuable.
Synthesis of New Materials
As advances in
material property
determination has been made, a renewed focus on creating materials and
mixtures has begun. Depending on the nature of the material to be
synthesized, a variety of techniqures to create materials can be
employed. Many of these approaches involve combinatorial methods, where
complex multi-component mixtures are required in order to explore
non-obvious "chemical space." There have been advancements in liquid
handling techniques, particularly inkjet-based approaches, resulting in
the ability to explore synthesis approaches in the nanoliter to
microliter regime. In addition to synthesis of new materials
themselves, there is a great deal of interest in changing the local
environment (chemical, spatial, thermal, etc.) that a material exists
in to explore and possibly exploit unique properties.
Optimization of material
Properties
Once a new material
has been made
it is often necessary to optimize its properties based on some measure
of performance or critical property. There are many properties of
interest, including mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical, optical,
morphological, and magnetic. Base on measurement of the properties of
interest, optimization of the material or its components occurs;
iteration of synthesis and measurement continues until the desired
properties are achieved. Depending on the nature of the material, these
optimization experiments can involve either manipulating the material
itself or the surrounding environment. Because many materials are
costly to synthesize or produce, performing optimization experiments
with minimal sample consumption is often desired. Optimization
experiments in the nanoliter to microliter volume range and microgram
to milligram mass range are quite common.
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