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Updated: Apr 9, 2026
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Published on: April 13, 2022
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Chemputer and chemputation-A universal chemical compound synthesis machine
Leroy Cronin1, Sebastian Pagel1, Abhishek Sharma1
1School of Chemistry, Advanced Research Centre, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G11 6EW, United Kingdom.
Summary
Chemputation enables universal chemical synthesis by treating reactions as code executed on programmable hardware. This approach ensures any molecule can be synthesized with real-time error correction for reliable results.
Area of Science:
- Computational Chemistry
- Chemical Engineering
- Synthetic Chemistry
Background:
- Traditional chemical synthesis lacks standardization and scalability.
- Programmable hardware offers potential for automated and reproducible chemical processes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To formalize chemical synthesis as a computational process (chemputation).
- To establish the universality and practicality of programmable chemical synthesis.
- To introduce a framework for verifiable and shareable chemical code.
Main Methods:
- Development of a Chemical Synthesis Turing Machine (CSTM) model.
- Implementation of a compiler for mapping reaction and hardware graphs.
- Execution of over 100 χDL programs on modular Chemputers with closed-loop control and error correction.
Main Results:
- Demonstration of a universal Chemputer capable of synthesizing any stable molecule.
- Validation of the Universal Chemputation Principle with linear scaling of operations.
- Successful execution of single-step to multistep syntheses with verifiable molecular outputs.
Conclusions:
- Chemputation establishes programmable chemical synthesis as a subset of computation.
- The framework enables shareable chemical code and interoperable hardware.
- This work provides a foundation for a formally provable and searchable map of chemical space.
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