Automation in the chemistry lab

Since the beginning of the pandemic, automated chemistry has moved up the priority list for many companies, says Paul Whittles, sales director at Deepmatter, a Glasgow, UK, based company developing tools for automated chemistry. The current situation means many companies are working at 25% lab capacity, but with completely automated synthesis, chemists sitting at home could program a robot to keep the lab working. ‘It’s something which people have been dreaming about for quite a while, but at the moment [the idea is] being taken more and more seriously by more and more people,’ says Whittles.

‘Automating chemistry isn’t actually that new,’ Whittles continues. ‘It’s something that people have been trying to do since the early 90s.’ But the last decade has seen an explosion in its use and in tools commercially available to carry it out. Now, says Michael Schneider, chief executive officer of automation specialists Chemspeed, based in Basel, Switzerland, ‘it is pivotal for anyone in order to stay competitive in research and development and quality control’. Richard Bourne from the University of Leeds, UK, agrees that industry is on board – he has worked with GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Pfizer on automating their process chemistry, and these companies are already looking to a future of labs with vast arrays of robotic handlers.