Research Highlight | Center for Nanoscale Materials

AI-powered autonomous electronic polymer synthesis
In a study published in Journal of the American Chemical Society, researchers introduced Polybot, an AI-driven autonomous system that rapidly designs and synthesizes electrochromic polymers with precision for energy and materials research.
AI-powered autonomous electronic polymer synthesis image
AI-driven inverse design workflow that combines reaction screening and properties optimization. Physics-informed models trained on literature data are refined through autonomous experimentation for efficient discovery of ECPs with targeted colors.

Scientific Achievement

Researchers developed a generalizable framework that achieved targeted electrochromic functionality with significant accuracy and efficiency.

Significance and Impact

This work advances inverse design approaches for functional polymers, accelerates discovery and supporting energy-efficient technologies, and establishes an open-access ECP database for the broader community.

Research Details

  • Polybot, a polymer design platform, enabled AI-driven decision-making within a modular, closed-loop workflow
  • The CNM Carbon computing cluster was used to develop physics-informed surrogate models for accurate prediction of ECP colors.

DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5c12241

Download this highlight

About Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials

The Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit https://​sci​ence​.osti​.gov/​U​s​e​r​-​F​a​c​i​l​i​t​i​e​s​/​U​s​e​r​-​F​a​c​i​l​i​t​i​e​s​-​a​t​-​a​-​G​lance.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.