One major challenge during liquid phase particle synthesis is the identification of advanced, multifunctional materials with respect to their end-user application. This requires however, an in-depth understanding of the formation mechanism as well as the unambiguous identification of scalable process parameters. Additionally, batch-to-batch reproducibility is required to identify at which point in the process chain from the synthesis of building blocks to their incorporation into final devices “quality” gets lost.
To address those aspects, we use a fully automated robotic platform for particle synthesis that is enclosed in a glovebox to assure a defined atmosphere by maximum exclusion of oxygen and humidity. The platform consists of 6 reactors with inline temperature control that can be operated up to 340 °C using two types of stirrers (triple blade and anchor stirrers), a heatable shaking rack for the preparation of stock solutions and a plate reader for high-throughput characterization of absorbance and emission. Unrivaled reproducibility with defined sampling intervals down to 6 s after initiation of the particle formation enables high throughput screenings of both, material and process parameters.
