Publication date: 22nd July 2026
Self-driving laboratories (SDLs) promise to fundamentally transform how we discover and scale advanced materials, yet realising that promise demands more than automating existing workflows. This talk presents our group’s expanding portfolio of SDL platforms and illustrates how the paradigm generalises across vastly different materials challenges. We begin with our flagship photovoltaic work, in which an SDL-enabled roll-to-roll line fabricated perovskite solar cell modules at 11% efficiency under ambient conditions, processing over 11,800 devices in 24 hours at a projected cost of approximately 0.7 USD/W. Building on the lessons learned, we describe HYDRA, our recently funded NRF AI for Science programme that deploys a closed-loop SDL for e-waste hydrometallurgy, coupling an Opentrons Flex liquid-handling robot with Agilent ICP-OES analytics to autonomously optimise metal-recovery processes from electronic waste. We then turn to an emerging frontier: AI-guided scaffold design for cultivated meat, where data-driven optimisation of biomaterial composition and architecture is being pursued under a dedicated SFA grant. Across these domains, a common thread emerges: the evolution of SDLs from narrow optimisation engines toward autonomous systems capable of hypothesis generation, cross-domain transfer, and integration of manufacturing constraints from the outset. We discuss how this vision is supported by our broader work in AI-driven materials discovery, including the development of autonomous agents and open-source tools that aim to democratise SDL access. The talk concludes with a roadmap for next-generation SDLs and reflections on the translational pathway from laboratory discovery to commercial impact, drawing on our ongoing technology-transfer and commercialisation efforts.
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) is celebrated yearly in May. The main topics are the development, function and modeling of materials and devices for hybrid and organic solar cells. The field is now dominated by perovskite solar cells but also other hybrid technologies, as organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration into devices for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production.
Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.