How to automate your lab
Whether it’s robots, automation or software hacks, Nessa Carson finds ways for everyone to improve how they work in the lab
A modern chemistry laboratory looks very different to the historic dawn of the field, when huge vessels of mysterious liquids would be left to settle for days, or stirred at length by a diligent assistant. Lab automation is now all around us in ways so ubiquitous as to be unremarkable – the NMR autosampler carousel, automated flash chromatography and the magnetic stirrer to save the assistant from boredom and RSI. As well as physical lab equipment, we habitually automate software tasks. The NMR carousel would not be much use without autoshim functionality, and most of us probably struggle to solve a Fourier transform manually.
This basic type of lab automation is now commonplace – but where is the cutting edge, and how can labs which have never before considered it exploit its benefits?