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Automated synthesis and characterization techniques for solar fuel production

Solar fuel production provides a sustainable route towards simultaneous energy harvesting and storage. However, this technology is hampered by the complexity and slow manual screening of the chemical design space to find suitable catalytic and light-harvesting materials. One solution is offered by automation, which has begun changing the landscape of material discovery and energy research.

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Fig. 1: Assessment of fabrication and characterization techniques based on selected automation criteria.

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Acknowledgements

V.A. is grateful for financial support from St John’s College Cambridge (Title A Research Fellowship) and the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability.

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K.P.S. and V.A. conceived and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Katarzyna P. Sokol or Virgil Andrei.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Sokol, K.P., Andrei, V. Automated synthesis and characterization techniques for solar fuel production. Nat Rev Mater 7, 251–253 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-022-00432-1

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