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Updated: Jun 27, 2026

MALDI-ToF MS Method for the Characterization of Synthetic Polymers with Varying Dispersity and End Groups
Published on: October 3, 2025
Automated and High-Throughput Phase Separation Control for Supramolecular Polymer Blends Enabled by Machine Learning
Yunfei Wang1,2, Daniel Struble1, Saroj Upreti1
1School of Polymer Science and Engineering, Center for Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi 39406, United States.
Abstract:
Supramolecular polymer blends (SPBs) offer tunable morphologies that dictate their macroscopic properties, yet their rational design is limited by the absence of predictive structure-morphology models. Here, we introduce a data-driven high-throughput workflow that integrates modular polymer synthesis, robotic formulation, automated morphology characterization, and machine learning (ML) for accelerated SPB discovery. Using a plug-and-play synthetic strategy, 33 hydrogen-bonding end-functional homopolymers were prepared and orthogonally combined to generate 260 SPBs in 1 day. A fully automated atomic force microscopy (AFM) pipeline enabled systematic imaging, producing 2340 morphology data sets with minimal human intervention. Domain spacings were extracted through complementary image-processing methods and used to train ML models. A support vector regression (SVR) model accurately predicted target phase-separation sizes (50, 100, and 150 nm), which were experimentally validated. This work demonstrates the power of coupling high-throughput experimentation with ML to accelerate morphology discovery and provides one of the first large-scale experimental data sets for supramolecular polymer systems.
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