A robotic AI-Chemist@USTC makes useful Oxygen generation catalyst with Martian meteorites. Credit: AI-Chemist Group at Unversity of Science and Technology of China
Immigration
to and living on Mars have long been depicted in science fiction. But before
that dream turns into reality, there is a hurdle humans have to overcome—the
lack of chemicals such as oxygen essential for long-term survival on the
planet. However, the recent discovery of water activity on Mars is promising.
Scientists are now exploring the
possibility of decomposing water to produce oxygen through electrochemical
water oxidation driven by solar power with the help of oxygen evolution reaction (OER)
catalysts. The challenge is to find a way to synthesize these catalysts in situ
using materials on Mars, instead of transporting them from the Earth, which is
costly.
To tackle this problem, a team led by
Prof. Luo Yi, Prof. Jiang Jun, and Prof. Shang Weiwei from the University of
Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
(CAS), recently made it possible to synthesize and optimize OER catalysts
automatically from Martian meteorites with their robotic artificial
intelligence (AI)-chemist.
Their research was published in Nature
Synthesis.
A robotic AI-Chemist@USTC makes useful Oxygen
generation catalyst with Martian meteorites. Credit: AI-Chemist Group at
Unversity of Science and Technology of China
"The AI chemist innovatively
synthesize[d] OER catalyst using Martian material based on
interdisciplinary cooperation," said Prof. Luo Yi, leading scientist of
the team.
In each experimental cycle, the AI
chemist first analyzes the elemental composition of the Martian ores using
laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) as its eyes.
Then, it carries out a series of
pretreatments on the ores, including weighing in the solid-dispensing
workstation, preparing feedstock solutions in the liquid-dispensing
workstation, performing separation from the liquid in the centrifugation
workstation, and achieving solidification in the dryer workstation.
The resulting metal hydroxides are
treated with Nafion adhesive to prepare the working electrode for OER testing
at the electrochemical workstation. The testing data are sent to the
computational 'brain' of the AI chemist in real-time for machine learning (ML)
processing.
The AI chemist's 'brain' employs
quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics
simulations for 30,000 high-entropy hydroxides with different elemental ratios
and calculates their OER catalytic activities via density functional theory.
The simulation data are used to train a neural network model for rapidly
predicting the catalysts' activities with different elemental compositions.
Finally, through Bayesian
optimization, the 'brain' predicts the combination of available Martian ores
needed for synthesizing the optimal OER catalyst.
So far, the AI chemist has created
an excellent catalyst using five types of Martian meteorites under unmanned
conditions. This catalyst can operate steadily for over 550,000 seconds at a
current density of 10 mA cm-2 and an overpotential of 445.1
mV. A further test at -37 °C, the temperature on Mars, confirmed that the
catalyst can steadily produce oxygen without any apparent degradation.
Within two months, the AI chemist
has completed the complex optimization of catalysts that would take 2,000 years
for a human chemist.
The team is working to turn the AI
chemist into a general experiment platform for various chemical synthesis
without human intervention. The paper's reviewer remarked, "This type of
research is of wide interest and is under rapid development in organic/inorganic
material synthesis and discovery."
"In the future, humans can establish an oxygen factory on Mars with the assistance of an AI chemist," said Jiang. Only 15 hours of solar irradiation is needed to produce sufficient oxygen concentration required for human survival. "This breakthrough technology brings us one step closer to achieving our dream of living on Mars," he said.
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