An affordable platform for automated synthesis and electrochemical characterization

Electrochemical techniques are pivotal for material discovery and renewable energy; however, often the extensive chemical spaces to be explored require high-throughput experimentation (HTE) to ensure timely results, which are costly both for instrument and materials/consumables. While self-driving laboratories (SDL) promise efficient chemical exploration, most contemporary implementations demand significant time, economic investment, and expertise. This study introduces an open and cost-effective autonomous electrochemical setup, comprising a synthesis platform and a custom-designed potentiostat device. We present an SDL platform that offers rapid deployment and extensive control over electrochemical experiments compared to commercial alternatives. Using ChemOS 2.0 for orchestration, we showcase our setup's capabilities through a campaign in which different metal ions reacts with ligands to form coordination compounds., yielding a database of 400 electrochemical measurements. Committed to open science, we provide a potentiostat design, campaign software, and raw data, aiming to democratize customized components in SDLs and ensure transparent data sharing and reproducibility.