Automation-Assisted Photoinduced Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization.

Area of Science:

• Polymer Chemistry
• Organic Synthesis
• Materials Science

Background:

• Oxygen-tolerant reversible-deactivation radical polymerizations (RDRP) facilitate polymer synthesis in open labware.
• Previous work automated photoinduced electron/energy transfer reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (PET-RAFT) and enzyme-assisted RAFT (Enz-RAFT).

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce and demonstrate automated atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) for high-throughput optimization.
• Provide insights into selecting reaction components for challenging monomers like methyl methacrylate.
• Facilitate data-driven optimization of ATRP reactions through high-throughput data generation.

Main Methods:

• Developed an automated ATRP platform compatible with open labware.
• Applied the platform to optimize ATRP chemistry, including ligand and initiator selection.
• Created a Python package for experimental planning and automated liquid handling recipes.

Main Results:

• Successfully demonstrated high-throughput optimization of ATRP.
• Gained insights into optimizing the polymerization of methyl methacrylate.
• Generated actionable recipes for manual or automated pipetting.

Conclusions:

• Automated ATRP accelerates the development and optimization of tailored polymers.
• This platform enables data-driven polymer synthesis and lowers the knowledge barrier.
• The developed tools facilitate integration of robotics for high-throughput polymer applications.