Robotic system for performing chemical synthesis with analysis of products
https://doi.org/10.26583/gns-2025-04-02
EDN: RWUQOK
Abstract
This paper describes a robotic system for performing chemical syntheses with product analysis, made with the aim of creating a prototype of a robot chemist. The basis was the automated system from the Russian-Japanese company Evotech-Mirai Genomics called «LifeBot». «LifeBot» was originally developed for isolating nucleic acids and preparing mixtures. To reprofile the system for chemical tasks, various modifications were made, including increasing the number of stored solvents and solutions dosed through additionally mounted peristaltic pumps, expanding the number of available reagents by modifying the storage and adding a manipulator and a rack with storage. The most significant modification was equipping the setup with a mixer with heating and temperature control, which allows parallel chemical syntheses execution. Another important modification was the addition of an interface for interacting with a liquid chromatograph, that makes it possible to analyze reaction mixtures after the synthesis. The software is written in Python and allows both direct control over the physical aspects of the robotic system and automatic parallel syntheses execution, starting with calculation of the required volumes of reagents, preparation of reaction mixtures, followed by stirring for the time required for synthesis with heating to the selected temperature and finishing with sampling and dilution for analysis and their sending to the chromatograph. Thus, human presence is required only during pre-synthesis preparations (loading solutions into storage, installing clean dispenser tips and reactor tubes) and after synthesis completion (release from used reactors and tips), which is promising in terms of minimizing human contact while working with harmful and/or hazardous substances. The operation of the system in automated syntheses with product analysis was tested on the reaction of glycine oligopeptide formation under the action of sodium trimetaphosphate, in which the synthesis conditions were varied: reagent ratios, temperature, process time.
Keywords
robotics,
chemical synthesis,
product analysis,
automation of chemical processes,
HPLC analysis,
artificial intelligence,
chemoinformatics,
organic reactions
Supporting agencies: This work was funded by financial support from the gov-ernment assignment for FRC Kazan Scientific Center of RAS
About the Authors
N. Yu. Serov
Kazan Federal University, A.M. Butlerov Chemistry Institute;
Federal Research Center «Kazan Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Science»
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Cand. Sci(Chem), Leading Researcher of the Laboratory of automated biochemical technologies of the Department of Advanced Research; Associate Professor, Department of Inorganic Chemistry
M. Sh. Adygamov
Kazan Federal University, A.M. Butlerov Chemistry Institute;
Federal Research Center «Kazan Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Science»
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Junior Researcher, Laboratory of automated biochemical technologies; Postgraduate student
A. O. Golub
Kazan Federal University, A.M. Butlerov Chemistry Institute
Russian Federation
Master's student, Chemoinformatics and Molecular Modeling program
Russian Federation
Master's student, Chemoinformatics and Molecular Modeling program
T. R. Gimadiev
Kazan Federal University, A.M. Butlerov Chemistry Institute;
Federal Research Center «Kazan Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Science»
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
PhD. Sci(Chem), Senior Researcher, Laboratory of automated biochemical technologies, Department of Advanced Research; Associate Professor, Department of Organic Chemistry
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Review
For citations:
Serov N.Yu., Adygamov M.Sh., Golub A.O., Gimadiev T.R. Robotic system for performing chemical synthesis with analysis of products. Nuclear Safety. 2025;15(4):19-29. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.26583/gns-2025-04-02. EDN: RWUQOK
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