Automated synthesis of gadopentetate dimeglumine through solid-liquid reaction in femtosecond laser fabricated microfluidic chips

Despite the continuously increased requirement on automated synthesis of medicines for distributed manufacturing and personal care, it remains a challenge to realize automated synthesis which requires solid-liquid phase reactions. In this work, we demonstrated an automated solid-liquid synthesis for gadopentetate dimeglumine, the most widely used magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) contrast agent. The high-efficiency reaction was performed in a 3D microfluidic chip which was fabricated by femtosecond laser micromachining. The structure of the chip realized 3D shear flow which was essential for highly efficient mixing and movement of the solid-liquid mixtures. Ultraviolet visible(UV-vis) spectrometer was employed for in-line analysis to help automation of this system. Comparing with the round-bottom flask system, this synthetic system showed significantly higher reaction rate, indicating the advantage of the3D microfluidic technology in micro chemical engineering.

Automated synthesis of steady-state continuous processes using reinforcement learning

Automated flowsheet synthesis is an important field in computer-aided process engineering.The present work demonstrates how reinforcement learning can be used for automated flowsheet synthesis without any heuristics or prior knowledge of conceptual design.The environment consists of a steady-state flowsheet simulator that contains all physical knowledge.An agent is trained to take discrete actions and sequentially build up flowsheets that solve a given process problem.A novel method named SynGameZero is developed to ensure good exploration schemes in the complex problem.Therein,flowsheet synthesis is modelled as a game of two competing players.The agent plays this game against itself during training and consists of an artificial neural network and a tree search for forward planning.The method is applied successfully to a reaction-distillation process in a quaternary system.

AI for organic and polymer synthesis

Recent years have witnessed the transformative impact from the integration of artificial intelligence with organic and polymer synthesis. This synergy offers innovative and intelligent solutions to a range of classic problems in synthetic chemistry. These exciting advancements include the prediction of molecular property, multi-step retrosynthetic pathway planning, elucidation of the structure-performance relationship of single-step transformation, establishment of the quantitative linkage between polymer structures and their functions, design and optimization of polymerization process, prediction of the structure and sequence of biological macromolecules, as well as automated and intelligent synthesis platforms. Chemists can now explore synthetic chemistry with unprecedented precision and efficiency, creating novel reactions, catalysts, and polymer materials under the datadriven paradigm. Despite these thrilling developments, the field of artificial intelligence(AI) synthetic chemistry is still in its infancy, facing challenges and limitations in terms of data openness, model interpretability, as well as software and hardware support. This review aims to provide an overview of the current progress, key challenges, and future development suggestions in the interdisciplinary field between AI and synthetic chemistry. It is hoped that this overview will offer readers a comprehensive understanding of this emerging field, inspiring and promoting further scientific research and development.

Design and Analysis of Hybrid Systems for Scooters

Hybrid technology has been widely developed for various vehicles in recent years.However,due to the limitation of size and space,it is difficult to apply the technology in the small two-wheeled vehicles,especially scooters.For scooters,the hybrid system could be with small capacity,and must be simple and affordable.The Purpose of this study is to analyze and develop the conceptual designs of fuel-electric hybrid systems especially for scooters.Firstly,the graph called ＂function power graph（FPG）＂ is defined,which transforms traditional mechanical schematic diagrams into simplified graphs,and makes the characteristics of hybrid systems can be identified clearly.Based on the FPG,a systematic method for synthesizing all possible arrangements of hybrid systems,then,is developed,and the hybrid system arrangements with one internal combustion engine（ICE）,one electric machine（M/G）,and some mechanical clutch units are all enumerated.In order to evaluate the applicability of these design concepts for Scooters,twelve system functions and three system complexities are defined,and this evaluation process can be automated numerically by using a computer program,which is Matlab in this study.With the systematic design and analysis methods developed,the function capability and characteristics of current hybrid systems can be easily identified,and also,new and useful hybrid systems are found for future possible applications.

The roles of computer-aided drug synthesis in drug development

With the improvements in computer computing ability,data accumulation and rapid algorithm development,the integration of artificial intelligence(AI)and drug synthesis has been accelerated,significantly improving the design and synthesis of drug molecules.Recently,data-driven computer-aided synthesis tools have been quickly and widely applied in retrosynthetic analysis,reaction prediction and automated synthesis,which can effectively accelerate the process of drug discovery and development and improve the quality of designed and synthesized drug molecules.Here,we review the development and applications of computer-aided synthesis technology and introduce recent advances in computer-aided drug development from three aspects:computer-aided drug design,computer-aided drug synthesis route design and computer-aided intelligent drug synthesis machines.Furthermore,the challenges and opportunities of computer-aided drug synthesis technology are discussed.

Synthetic Automations:A Revolution from"Stone Age"to Modern Era

Traditional synthesis made outstanding achievements but still suffers various drawbacks,such as manual operation,poor efficiency,and lack of reproducibility.Thanks to the development of laboratory automation,synthetic chemistry is now chasing a pavement from a labor-intensive process to intelligent automation.Herein,we highlight some of the most recent representative breakthroughs in automated synthesis and present an outlook for this field.We hope this Topic can arouse chemists'interest in automated synthe-sis and drive synthetic automation to a better intelligent and automatic way.