High-Throughput Experimentation - Turbocharged Chemistry

Take six ingredients. Mix them together in all the possible combinations. Then measure 10 different properties for the resulting formulations, new compounds or materials that come out of the chemistry.

While you are at it, repeat the experiments under all the different processing conditions that you can produce. Finally, screen every formulation that you get from that variety of mixtures and processing options to see how it stands up against a set of desirable attributes.

Such an experimental campaign can investigate all the possible combinations that chemistry offers. Until recently, checking even a tiny set of formulations would have kept a postgraduate busy for the three years or more that it took to earn a PhD. Handling the full set would have tied up every budding chemist in all the UK's universities. And many of them would have achieved not much for their efforts.

Today, robots - integrated with sophisticated sample production and screening that delivers results into powerful data collection and analysis - can complete this mammoth task in days. At the end of the process the robots will have sorted out the promising formulations from the failures. In the process, they have provided a great deal of valuable information on the chemistry. The robots in question are automated laboratory systems that can carry out many thousands of experiments time and again without succumbing to boredom. The tests to measure different properties, again conducted by automated lab hardware, are sophisticated 'screens' that investigate a property that you want to measure.

MSG is deeply involved in the HTE area for ICI. For example, Separation Science Manager Dr. Bernard Fields and his team have been working closely witha flavouring business to help them find appealing flavours that might be of interest to the food market.

One project in particular has involved producing many different kinds of cheese flavouring separations in the lab. Large numbers of vials are shipped off each week to tasters ata European mainland location for the human touch - or rather tongue - to find out what might make an interesting new food product.

Why would anyone want to do so much chemistry? Because 'faster chemistry' is a neat fit with the modern way of doing business. HTE makes it possible to respond more quickly to market challenges. It also increases the efficiency of research by probing the science involved more thoroughly, delivering deeper and broader knowledge that allows the writing of more comprehensive and thorough patents.