High-throughput synthesis equipment applied to polymer research

To speed up synthetic polymer research, a workflow dedicated to automated polymer synthesis and characterization was developed. The workflow consists of several synthesis robots with online and offline analytical equipment. For screening of reaction parameters and for library synthesis, robots equipped with glass reactors and vortex agitation are applied that match very well the classical (small-scale) laboratory experiments. For the screening and library preparation also a microwave synthesizer can be used. For upscaling purposes and process development, a robot containing 100 mL tank reactors with mechanical stirring is utilized. This robot also offers the possibility to continuously feed reagents to the reactor and to operate in batch, semibatch or continuous mode. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.