AI Robotic Chemist Creates Oxygen-Producing Catalyst from Martian Meteorite

Chinese research team “performs rock analysis, catalyst synthesis, testing, and optimization independently”

“Success in catalyst synthesis and oxygen production using actual Martian meteorites… Expected to utilize manned exploration.”

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Joo-young = A robot artificial intelligence (AI) chemist can analyze rocks on Mars on its own like a human chemist, use the materials contained therein to create a catalyst necessary for oxygen generation, and then produce oxygen on site. developed.

Robot AI chemist creates oxygen production catalyst from Martian meteorite

[The AI-Chemist Group at University of Science and Technology of China 제공 재판매 및 DB 금지]

In the scientific journal ‘Nature Synthesis’ on the 14th, Dr. Jun Zhang’s team from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) described a robotic AI chemist that creates a catalyst that can be used to produce oxygen from Martian rocks without human intervention. It was announced that it had been developed.

This robot AI chemist created an oxygen generating catalyst from an actual Martian meteorite, and it was confirmed that this catalyst can stably produce oxygen without performance degradation for a long period of time at the Martian temperature of -37℃, so it is expected to be used for future manned exploration of Mars. do.

The possibility of humanity visiting Mars is growing, with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) planning a manned exploration of Mars. However, for humans to visit Mars and survive on Mars, the procurement of essential materials such as oxygen needed for life support and rocket propellants must be resolved.

In particular, as evidence of the existence of water has recently been discovered on Mars, it is expected that it will be possible to produce oxygen from water. To this end, research is being actively conducted to create oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts on site using Martian materials instead of bringing them from Earth. .

In this study, the research team developed a robot AI chemist that analyzes Martian rocks on its own, creates an oxygen generating catalyst using the ingredients contained in the rocks, and then finds the optimal catalyst by repeating catalyst performance tests.

Robot AI chemist composition and oxygen generation catalyst synthesis process

The robotic AI chemist consists of a mobile robot, a computing brain, a cloud server and 14 work stations. The robot AI chemist performs the entire process, including Martian rock pretreatment and analysis, catalyst synthesis, catalyst characterization, catalyst testing, and optimal catalyst search, without human intervention. [Nature Synthesis/Jun Jiang et al.제공. 재판매 및 DB 금지]

In performance verification using five types of meteorites that actually came from Mars or were confirmed to exist on Mars, the robot AI chemist performed the entire process, including meteorite pretreatment, catalyst synthesis, characterization, catalyst testing, and optimal catalyst search, without human intervention. .

The research team said that this robot AI chemist used machine learning to automatically and quickly identify the optimal catalyst among more than 3 million catalysts that can be made from meteorite components. This process is a massive task that would take 2,000 years for one human chemist to do.

Additionally, it was confirmed that the catalyst created by the robot AI chemist could actually work under simulated Mars conditions. This catalyst operated stably for more than 550,000 seconds at a current density of 10 mA/cm2 and an overpotential of 445.1 mV, and was found to be able to produce oxygen without any significant performance degradation even at -37°C, the temperature of Mars.

Dr. Jang said, “In the future, with the help of AI chemists, we may be able to build an oxygen factory on Mars. Only 15 hours of sunlight is needed to produce oxygen at the concentration necessary for human survival. This groundbreaking technology will make it possible to achieve the dream of living on Mars.” “I’m taking a step closer,” he said.

◆ 출처 : Nature Synthesis, Jun Jiang et al., ‘Automated synthesis of oxygen-producing catalysts from Martian meteorites by a robotic AI chemist’,

[email protected]