Labs across the globe networked by AI discover state-of-the-art emitters for lasers

Best-in-class emitter materials for organic solid state lasers have been discovered by laboratories spread across the world that were coordinated by an artificial intelligence. The researchers believe the technique could provide a blueprint for running experiments in parallel and thereby accelerating the discovery of other materials.

In recent years, the development of robotics and artificial intelligence has led to increasing interest in ‘self-driving labs’, with the design, synthesis, testing and analysis of molecules carried out automatically, and used to select subsequent molecules for synthesis and analysis. In principle, this could be much more efficient if multiple labs pooled their analytical resources to work on the same problem – especially as different labs have different specialist equipment – but integrating the work of labs in real time is extremely challenging.