A nanomaterials discovery robot for the Darwinian evolution of shape programmable gold nanoparticles

Daniel Salley, Graham Keenan, Jonathan Grizou, Abhishek Sharma, Sergio Martín and Leroy Cronin ()
Additional contact information
Daniel Salley: University of Glasgow
Graham Keenan: University of Glasgow
Jonathan Grizou: University of Glasgow
Abhishek Sharma: University of Glasgow
Sergio Martín: University of Glasgow
Leroy Cronin: University of Glasgow

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract The fabrication of nanomaterials from the top-down gives precise structures but it is costly, whereas bottom-up assembly methods are found by trial and error. Nature evolves materials discovery by refining and transmitting the blueprints using DNA mutations autonomously. Genetically inspired optimisation has been used in a range of applications, from catalysis to light emitting materials, but these are not autonomous, and do not use physical mutations. Here we present an autonomously driven materials-evolution robotic platform that can reliably optimise the conditions to produce gold-nanoparticles over many cycles, discovering new synthetic conditions for known nanoparticle shapes using the opto-electronic properties as a driver. Not only can we reliably discover a method, encoded digitally to synthesise these materials, we can seed in materials from preceding generations to engineer more sophisticated architectures. Over three independent cycles of evolution we show our autonomous system can produce spherical nanoparticles, rods, and finally octahedral nanoparticles by using our optimized rods as seeds.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16501-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16501-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16501-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().