Autonomous Synthesis of Nanoparticles with Target Scattering Patterns

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Nanotechnology
• Chemical Synthesis

Background:

• Controlled synthesis of materials with specific atomic structures is crucial for technological advancement but often relies on inefficient trial-and-error methods.
• Nanoparticle (NP) synthesis is particularly challenging due to numerous tunable parameters influencing their atomic arrangement and emergent properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an autonomous approach for synthesizing nanoparticles with targeted atomic structures.
• To demonstrate a method that explicitly uses scattering patterns to guide synthesis without prior embedded knowledge.

Main Methods:

• An autonomous synthesis protocol was designed using real-time experimental total scattering (TS) and pair distribution function (PDF) data.
• The method matches experimental data to simulated target scattering patterns to guide synthesis.
• Experiments were conducted at a synchrotron facility.

Main Results:

• Successfully targeted two distinct gold nanoparticle (NP) structures: 5 nm decahedral and 10 nm face-centered cubic.
• Demonstrated the autonomous design of synthesis protocols by matching experimental scattering data to simulated targets.
• Validated the approach's ability to achieve atomic structure-specific synthesis.

Conclusions:

• Specifying target scattering patterns and autonomously generating synthesis protocols can enable on-demand, atomic structure-informed materials design.
• The developed method, ScatterLab, offers a generalizable blueprint for autonomous, structure-targeted synthesis.
• This approach has the potential to accelerate materials discovery and application across diverse fields.