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Engineering principles for self-driving laboratories

The chemical engineering field stands at a pivotal moment of transformation, driven in part by the convergence of process automation, robotics and artificial intelligence into self-driving laboratories (SDLs) to accelerate scientific discoveries. This Comment explores how process intensification principles can guide the development of SDLs to accelerate innovation while ensuring efficient use of resources across the multiscale chemical ___domain.

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Fig. 1: An SDL architecture.
Fig. 2: Intensification of SDL process units.

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Acknowledgements

M.A. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation (awards 1940959 and 420490) and the University of North Carolina Research Opportunities Initiative (UNC-ROI) program.

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Correspondence to Milad Abolhasani.

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Delgado-Licona, F., Addington, D., Alsaiari, A. et al. Engineering principles for self-driving laboratories. Nat Chem Eng 2, 277–280 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44286-025-00217-7

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