The time needed to develop and screen ligands for use in chemical research can be drastically reduced with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). Recognizing that the time-intensive nature of the human-dependent approach to catalyst development, researchers developed Fast-Cat to speed in-depth analyses of catalytic reactions.

How fast is Fast-Cat? This combination of AI and automated systems can deliver more information in five days than is possible in six months of conventional testing. The autonomous technology continuously performs high-temperature, high-pressure, gas-liquid reactions in the laboratory. No human input is needed for the system to assess the output from each of these reactions and determine how different variables affect the outcome of each experiment. Fast-Cat relies on findings from previous experiments it has run to inform which test it will run next.

Proof-of-concept testing described in Nature Chemical Engineering entailed the use of Fast-Cat to characterize the catalytic performance of six ligands that are already found in the research literature. Due to its scalable and modular nature, the self-driving catalysis laboratory developed by researchers from Eastman Chemical Company and North Carolina State University can be integrated with a robotic chemical workstation and other automation tools to expand the library of materials available for chemical reaction exploration and optimization.