The University of British Columbia

Purpose

The University of British Columbia (UBC) will work with the NRC and Miru Smart Technologies Corp (Miru) to build and test a self-driving laboratory to discover and optimize materials for electrochromic devices. Specifically, a self-driving laboratory (SDL) will be equipped with the ability to formulate precursor solutions for electrochromic films (UBC focus), deposit and process electrochromic films for offline assembly (Miru focus) and electrochemical characterization (NRC focus). Results obtained from the self-driving laboratory platform will provide data to a machine learning algorithm that will autonomously iterate formulation or processing parameters and further optimize device performance. UBC will focus on developing automated chemical handling capabilities based on a robotic arm platform and then incorporate online analytics and feedback control to enable the overall system to make autonomous decisions within the formulation workflow. Finally, the formulation platform will be integrated with offline device assembly and testing modules and machine learning to enable end-to-end optimization without human intervention.