Automated liquid handling system

The University of Groningen (hereinafter: the UG) intends to procure an automated liquid handling system and to integrate it with the Tecan Spark plate reader already in use at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry. The combined system will be used to analyse and characterise reaction kinetics and to feed the resulting data into an AI-driven optimisation loop. Within the BigChemistry initiative, a new RobotLab has recently been established at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry (University of Groningen). The overarching goal of the RobotLab is to enable closed-loop optimization of catalytic processes through automation. Plate-reader-based analysis is well suited to this goal: up to 384 reaction conditions can be measured in a single run, and the material consumed per screening is low (down to 20 µL per well, compared with 0.5–1 mL for traditional UV-vis and fluorescence spectrophotometers). Achieving this goal requires the continuous generation of reliable, high-quality analytical data to characterise reaction kinetics and to feed directly into AI-driven optimisation models. A single human operator can generate only a limited volume of data per day, and manual handling introduces variability and error. An automated liquid handler coupled to a plate reader, with both instruments orchestrated through a single software environment, is therefore necessary to achieve the autonomous, high-throughput data acquisition and the feedback to the control algorithms that the RobotLab requires. The RobotLab brings together several research groups within the Institute, working on reaction screening, the synthesis of libraries of organic ligands and peptides, and the optimisation of catalytic processes. High-throughput automated analysis — in particular UV-vis and fluorescence — is therefore critical to generating the data volumes needed to close the experimental loop between catalysis, analysis and AI-driven decision-making. See the market consultation document for futher information.